


Mars, the Bringer of War

by X_bladeMaster



Series: A Symphony of Gold [1]
Category: Tales of Symphonia, 黄金の太陽 | Golden Sun Series, 黄金の太陽 漆黒なる夜明け | Golden Sun: Dark Dawn
Genre: Gen, I don't know what I'm doing, Mentions of most characters, any romance is mostly an accident, canon pairings - Freeform, how do you tag, is basically a rehash of the Tales of Symphonia game, not me, not romance focused, pretty much my life right now, really what am i doing, who knows - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-22
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:28:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 48,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21524506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/X_bladeMaster/pseuds/X_bladeMaster
Summary: It's a normal day for Matthew; the sun is shining, the birds are singing, Mt. Aleph is ceaselessly erupting on the horizon. He and his dad are having a friendly spar, because even two years after the end of the Grave Eclipse, its effects are still being seen all across Weyard and the monsters are only growing stronger. It really is too bad Alex had to show up and ruin everything.Now Matthew's trapped in a strange desert with his Psynergy on the fritz and some weird lunatics ranting about 'mana fluctuations', whatever those are, locked in a strange base made of a silvery metal he can't quite identify.And who's this kid in red?
Relationships: Colette Brunel/Lloyd Irving, Mut | Matthew/Stella | Sveta
Series: A Symphony of Gold [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1551343
Comments: 13
Kudos: 25





	1. This has been a long day, but I'm still alive and that's what counts

Matthew looked up with passing interest as the door slid open with a loud screech of metal on metal. He sat up when he realized the soldiers were bringing in someone else, someone who was unconscious by the look of things. He became much more interested when he realized the person they were bringing in was a boy about his age, clad in a red jacket that was almost blinding.

He stuck out his tongue at one of the soldiers when they caught him staring. “Stupid kid,” the soldier muttered, and his partner sighed.

“You know he only does it because you keep reacting to him.” The two of them dumped their burden in the cell across from Matthew’s and began to walk away.

“I can’t help it! How the hell does he keep recognizing me anyways!?” Smug, Matthew lay back down on the cot in his cell as the soldier complained. “I wear a different set of armor every time I come in here, I never take my helmet off, and I sure as hell never talk to him! How does he keep _doing_ that?!” Matthew would never tell him that he could feel the vibrations of his footsteps through the ground; the soldier had a distinct gait that made identifying him easy as breathing. “And why only me?!” Because it was fun, duh. None of the other soldiers so much as glanced at him, and he was bored out of his mind waiting in this cell for Botta to figure out what to do with him.

If only his psynergy wasn’t on the fritz, he’d have busted out of here _ages_ ago. He no longer had the patience his father had once praised him for, and he couldn’t stand being cooped up in one place for too long. But something about the air here in this world made his psynergy backfire, and the cell was way too small for him to experiment; if his Cast exploded, there was nowhere to dodge.

“Ow,” the kid moaned, waking up. Matthew glanced at him as he picked himself up off the floor. “What happened?” He glanced around, panic blossoming in his expression. “Where am I?”

Matthew shrugged and scratched at his exposed neck, catching the kid’s attention. “Some sort of base of a terrorist group, near as I can figure.”

The kid looked around more, taking in the surroundings and the patrolling guard. Matthew ignored her, because she was boring and didn’t even glare at him like some of the others did. She just patrolled the single hallway like her life depended on it. “Who are you?” the kid asked.

“Matthew,” he answered easily. “And yourself?”

“Lloyd,” the kid said after a moment’s hesitation. “Lloyd Irving.”

“Alright then. Hey, you got anything that could reach that keypad?” Matthew asked, pointing towards the keypad in question. The guard finally glared at him, and Matthew winked at her. She snarled at him, and Lloyd stared at him like he was nuts. “See, it opens the doors here. No idea _how_ , but it works.”

“Shut up,” the guard snarled, and Matthew crossed his arms.

“Make me,” he taunted, and she looked like she was seriously considering it before stalking off.

“Where is she going?” Lloyd sounded a bit bewildered.

Matthew shrugged again, flopping back onto his cot. “Probably going to ask Botta if she can murder me now. Anyways,” he bounced back to his feet. “You, keypad, reach?”

“Botta?” Lloyd shook his head, pulling something out of his pocket. “Never mind. This is all they didn’t take from me.”

Matthew could just about make out the ring Lloyd was holding out to him, but, perhaps more importantly, he could _feel_ it. There was a lot of—what did they call it here? Mana, right. There was a lot of mana in that ring. “What is that thing?” Matthew breathed out, leaning as close as he could to the new source of interest. It was fire and ancient and willful; it reminded him, just a bit, of the Insight Glass from Ayuthay, only like fire and heat instead of water and chill.

“It’s called the Sorcerer’s ring,” Lloyd explained, turning so it was aimed at the keypad. “All you do is put a bit of mana in it and…” A surge of mana swirled around Lloyd, ignited, and shot out of the ring in a burst of sparks. The keypad had no defenses and went up in flames. “And there we go!” Lloyd cheered as the doors lifted open. “The doors have been opened.”

“Yay for magical items,” Matthew agreed, stepping out into the hallway and clapping Lloyd on the shoulder. “I was going insane in there.”

Lloyd snickered. “You mean you weren’t already?”

Matthew rolled his eyes but didn’t bother to fight the smile on his face. “Sanity is relative,” he declared. “Come on, I gotta find my sword.”

Lloyd made a noise of agreement. “Mine too. I want them back.”

 _Them as in plural?_ Matthew wondered, but only nodded and pointed down the hallway. “Onwards then!”

Lloyd held back laughter again. “’Onwards’? What century do you come from?”

“I don’t know, I lost track,” Matthew countered easily, and Lloyd lost his inner battle. “Right, let’s go before the guard comes back. She could make things difficult for us if she raises the alarm.”

Shortly down the hall, in a guard’s station that was more of a storage room, Matthew and Lloyd found what they were looking for. While Lloyd made a beeline for the back wall and the weapons leaning against it, Matthew went for the desk. “My scarf!” he cried, cradling the patched, worn yellow scarf near his chest, breathing in the familiar scent of home.

“Don’t you want your sword?” Lloyd asked, fastening something to both his sides. Huh, so he was a dual swordsman; that was a new thing to Matthew. Most of the people he knew were sword-and-board fighters, or staff masters. He’d never met someone who fought with a weapon in both hands.

Except for Sveta, but she didn’t really fight with weapons. She just used her fists. And claws. And sometimes her teeth.

…Venus that girl could be really scary sometimes.

“Yeah, I’m coming,” Matthew mumbled into his scarf before happily returning it to its rightful place around his neck. He couldn’t help the sigh of relief that escaped him as its familiar weight settled on his shoulders. Then he turned to retrieve his sword; the giant, triangular weapon that had existed for far longer than he had and yet still retained the sharpest edge known on Weyard. The Sol Blade’s red hilt felt comfortable in his hands, and he knew he wasn’t imagining the faint hum of contentment it emitted. “That feels much better,” he admitted after fixing the blade across his back, the tip of the great-sword reaching down past his knees. “We should get…” He blinked, looking at Lloyd. Were those…? “Lloyd? Why are you wearing sticks?”

Lloyd scowled at him. “They get the job done,” he argued, hands curling defensively around the hilts of his toy swords.

Matthew could only stare. The kid was going to get himself killed at this rate. “The only thing they’re going to do is assist you in getting yourself killed,” he said bluntly. Matthew held up his hand to forestall Lloyd’s protest, rooting around in his bag he’d found next to his scarf. Lloyd’s mouth dropped open as Matthew stuck his whole arm into the pack.

“What is that?” he gasped.

“It’s an Adventurer’s Pack,” Matthew answered, still groping around for that elusive item. “And no, I don’t know how it works. It just does, and that’s all I’ve ever needed to know. Aha!” he crowed, having found what he was looking for. “Here,” he pulled from his pack two swords, of the Light Sword class. One had a blade that was straight as an arrow with a light blue hue, with a hilt wrapped in gold leather and a guard that curved up towards the blade on one side and down to the hilt on the other. This was a blade that could slice apart the wind.

The other was purple in color, and had a straight edge that looked soft, somehow. The cross guard was rigid and unyielding, like hard ice, and the hilt was wrapped with the same gold leather of the first. This was a blade that flowed like water. “Phaeton’s Blade and the Masamune,” Matthew announced, holding them out to Lloyd. The other teen gaped at him when he realized Matthew was handing them to him. “You can borrow them for now. They’ll work better than those toys you have.”

“I,” Lloyd stammered, “they’re not-!” He tried being offended before deflating. “Thanks,” he finally offered, gingerly taking the two swords from Matthew. “Woah,” he breathed as they pulsed their dormant psynergy, assessing the new wielder they’d been handed to. A second later they stopped their evaluation, deeming Lloyd an adequate swordsman, and Matthew let out a puff of air before handing over the sheaths. “What was that?” Lloyd demanded, carefully fixing them to his sides. Matthew took his toys and dropped them into his pack, figuring the other teen probably wouldn’t want to leave them behind.

“They were making sure you were worthy of wielding them,” he answered, starting out the door into the rest of the base. “They’re…mana-infused and even though they don’t have a conscious that speaks, they’re slightly sentient; if they don’t like you they throw you into the nearest wall for daring to touch them.” He glanced at the two swords resting by Lloyd’s sides. “Neither of those swords particularly like me, so I can’t use them very well.”

“What about your sword?” Lloyd asks, catching up with him as they strolled down the hallway. “Is it mana-infused as well? And how come these ones don’t like you?”

“They don’t like me because they’re infused with wind and water mana, and I’m more inclined to earth and fire. And yes, my sword is mana-infused. With earth and fire, actually. It’s much pickier though; of everyone I’ve met, the only ones able to wield it other than me were my father and my uncle.”

Lloyd opened his mouth to ask another question, Matthew could see it in his eyes. But he was interrupted by the guard returning, along with another soldier. “Prison break!” she instantly shrieked, her partner lunging forward and catching both teens off guard. Lloyd yelped as he brought up his swords to block, catching the soldier’s blade on the cross of his own. That second of defense he bought was enough time for Matthew to draw his own blade, the gold sheen it held reflecting the harsh light shining from the strange lanterns that lit the hallways.

The fight was over seconds after that, both soldiers lying unconscious at Matthew’s feet and him not even breathing hard. He’d be a lot happier about that if he couldn’t hear the alarms blaring all around them. “Shit,” he hissed, his eyes narrowing. That would make things much more difficult for the two of them, especially since Matthew was only fighting at about half-strength without his psynergy. He spun around to face Lloyd, ignoring the way the teen was staring at him. “We need to get out of here, now,” Matthew barked, the alarms around them merging with the ones that still haunted his nightmares. He half expected shadows to rise from the ground and attack.

“Y-yeah,” Lloyd agreed. “I don’t know which way to go though.”

Matthew reached for the earth, grateful he could still do at least that much. There was a large concentration of people to the north so…he glanced to the west. “Hide!” he hissed, pulling Lloyd with him into a shallow recess in the floor that housed a strange circular device. Just in time it seemed, as the two soldiers he’d sensed moments ago entered the room from the west door. Matthew fell deathly silent, feeling horribly exposed in such a feeble hiding spot, but there hadn’t been time to find another.

Pressed into his side, Lloyd was completely still, only the rapid race of his pulse betraying his anxiety. One soldier ran down the corridor towards the cells, while the other prowled around the room, getting closer to where they hid. Before he got close enough to spot them, the other soldier reappeared. “They weren’t down there.”

The soldier he addressed frowned. “Strange. How could we have missed them? There’s only one passage out of here.”

“Could they have gone into the barracks?” the other asked.

The soldier shook his head negatively. “We would have heard of them being caught if that was the case,” he pointed out. “Damn! Lord Botta is not going to be pleased; Lloyd is one thing, but that other kid’s mana is freaky. We have to find him before he does anything strange.”

As the other voiced his affirmative and both soldiers headed out the same door they’d come in from, in a distant corner of his mind Matthew was offended. His psynergy was _not_ ‘strange’; it just wasn’t mana. “Yeah, well, you all are the biggest bunch of freaks I’ve ever come across,” Matthew muttered after them childishly.

“Come on, Matthew, we have to go,” Lloyd reminded him, hauling himself out of the recess. Matthew started to follow him when Lloyd yelped and fell back in.

“Lloyd!” Matthew dropped down to the other boy’s side as Lloyd sat up and rubbed the back of his head, groaning in pain and staring at the ring in his hand apprehensively. Matthew glanced at it, wondering what was so interesting about it besides the fact that it spat fire, when he realized it had changed, somehow. Instead of being heat and fire, it was now sparks and lightning. “How did you do that?” he demanded.

Lloyd shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said, sounding as baffled as Matthew felt. “It just changed for some reason.” As they both watched, tiny sparks shot out of the Sorcerer’s Ring. “I think it shoots lightning now.” Lloyd sounded a little numb as he made that quiet observation.

“I am inclined to agree,” Matthew said just as quietly, before snapping out of it. “Right, let’s get going. We aren’t out of the woods yet.” Lloyd nodded and they both finally pulled themselves out of their hiding spot.

“Should we go that way?” Lloyd pointed to the door the soldiers hadn’t gone through, the door that led to the high concentration of people.

“No, those guys said it led to the barracks,” Matthew refuted, glad they actually had done that, so he wouldn’t have to explain the strange sense he had as a Venus Adept. “Better to just go the way they went. At least we’ll be going behind them; they won’t get the chance to sneak up on us.”

The hallway through the door didn’t have any branches, leaving them with only one way to go. Matthew felt terribly vulnerable in the well-lit hallway, and only avoided jumping at shadows due to the fact that there were none. Lloyd looked just as jumpy, one hand gripping the hilt of the Masamune.

“Which way now?” Lloyd whispered, glancing around nervously at the branching hallways they’d reached.

Matthew reached for the earth again, his eyes widening as he felt someone approaching from the right. “Left!” he hissed, hauling Lloyd after him and into the first door he saw just before the soldier rounded the corner. He’d been too focused on the soldier behind them to realize his mistake until the door slid shut behind them.

“That was close,” Lloyd began, then let out a yelp as Matthew dragged him away from the door and towards a more defensible corner. “Matthew what-?”

“And just who the hell are you?” The man in the room asked. Matthew, getting a better look at the man, relaxed marginally. His first instinct, that the man in front of him was Alex, had just been paranoia. True, the man in front of him had blue hair, and a cape that looked like it would billow dramatically in the wind, and a cold expression. But his eyes were green, not ice-blue. His cape was a dark blue, not that obnoxious purple, and his hair was too dark of a color. It was the giant double-bladed sword attached to his back that clinched the differences though; Alex was more of a Caster than a melee fighter. Double-bladed swords were notoriously difficult to wield, but Matthew had the feeling this guy knew what he was doing with that thing.

“Give me your name, and I shall give you mine!” Lloyd declared. Arrogant much? Matthew shifted so Lloyd was firmly behind him.

“I see no reason to introduce myself to someone who has demanded my name before giving his own,” Matthew added, holding his sword in a defensive position. Wow, he was just as bad. He nearly snarled at Lloyd to get behind him when the other teen came up beside him, his own swords drawn, but the man interrupted him with dry laughter.

“You two certainly have guts,” he said, raising his hand. Matthew took a sharp breath as mana swirled around him, crackling like Lloyd’s ring had earlier. “But I’m afraid I see no reason to introduce myself to miserable little creatures such as yourselves.”

“What a coincidence,” Lloyd spat. “I don’t see the need to introduce myself to a moron who doesn’t realize how pathetic he is!”

The man’s anger spiked, the mana turning visible as he exuded an aura of great danger. “You little-” he snarled, sparks starting to reach for Lloyd.

“Lloyd!” Matthew yelped, his sword swinging up in an attempt to block the bolt of lightning headed for the younger swordsman. Lloyd was bringing up his own swords, but Matthew could see, with a horrible sort of clarity, that the both of them would be too slow.

Then the mana surge…stopped. “Lloyd?” the man said, suddenly interested. “You’re Lloyd?” The lightning fizzled out of existence inches from them, and Matthew shuddered when he realized that if they’d still been standing near the door they’d come in, the bolt would have struck them before the man had stopped.

“And if I am?” Lloyd said cautiously, his swords still raised. The Jupiter element of Phaeton’s Blade was pulsing warningly, giving the blade an unearthly glow. The man ignored it, and Matthew decided he didn’t like the look in his eyes.

He chuckled. “I certainly see the resemblance.” The man went to say more, but the other door slid open and Botta, the man who’d thrown him in the cells in the first place, ran inside.

“Sir!” the giant man snapped. “The Chosen’s group has infiltrated the facility!”

“You- you’re the Desian that attacked the temple!” Lloyd snarled, instantly turning his blades on Botta. Matthew kept his own sword leveled on the Alex look-alike, deeming him the larger threat.

The man hummed, looking between Lloyd and his subordinate. “Is ‘he’ with them, Botta?”

“Yes sir,” Botta replied. “It’s impossible to hold him back.”

“Then I will be taking my leave. Our plans will be ruined if he sees me.” Matthew wasn’t sure why the man was leaving, but something in him relaxed at that. The man was a huge threat, and he doubted he could manage to take him on his own; maybe with Tyrell and Karis backing him up he could do it, but by himself and with Lloyd to protect? There was no way.

Then the man looked at Lloyd again, and Matthew tensed, readying for a fight anyways. “Lloyd,” he said. “The next time we meet, you’re mine.”

“Because that’s not creepy in the slightest,” Matthew hissed, his sword seeming sharper than it had seconds ago as the dormant Mars psynergy within it began to flare. The man said nothing more, simply exiting the room with a dramatic swish of his cape. The door had barely clicked shut behind him when the other door opened as Botta advanced. Matthew snarled at the thought of more reinforcements; he couldn’t defeat Botta without his psynergy, he’d already tried that.

But then, one of the newcomers let out a yell. “Lloyd! Are you okay!?” It was a young boy with silver hair, accompanied by a blonde girl about Lloyd’s age, a woman with the same hair as the boy, and an older swordsman with auburn hair and a stoic expression who reminded him of Lloyd. A relative, perhaps?

“Genis…” Lloyd blinked, startled. “Colette!”

The girl clasped her hands together, worry in her large blue eyes. “Are you alright? Are you hurt?”

The swordsman studied Lloyd for a few seconds. “He looks fine,” he stated, but despite the lack of emotion on his face, Matthew could hear the slight relief in his voice. Definitely a relative then; too young to be a father, so older brother perhaps? Then again, Isaac looked too young to be Matthew’s father, but he was anyways.

Botta laughed mockingly. “Welcome, Chosen!” Matthew frowned, because that sounded like a title. “How fortunate you’ve all found your way here. Now I can take care of everything at once.” Matthew’s frown deepened, because Botta was a good swordsman, but Matthew could match him; had, actually, until the man had cheated and called for back-up. And now he thought he could take on three swordsman by himself? Lloyd was pretty average, in terms of skill, but the older swordsman who’d just come in walked with the grace of a skilled fighter.

And Matthew doubted the other three in the room were unarmed either.

Then Botta pulled out his sword, and Matthew had to stare at it for a bit. He’d fought Botta a week ago, and that had not been his sword. That sword had been a plain, straight long sword with nothing special about it. This sword was a bright red monstrosity that curved and burned with an energy that almost felt like lava.

“ **Fireball**!” Botta shouted, and things dissolved into chaotic combat.

Matthew ducked under the fire thrown his way, sensing mana swirling around the people in the crowded room; mostly around the silver-haired siblings and Botta. Matthew figured that was because the three of them were the ones throwing spells around, Botta getting hit with a ball of fire that originated from the younger boy’s—was that a kendama? Yes, that was a kendama. And he’d thought Lloyd’s swords had been toys, that was—that was literally a toy. He was literally fighting with a toy, and totally kicking ass with it. Just, what even. What even was this crazy world?

“ **Barrier**!” the boy’s sister cried, and a glowing green barrier sprung up around everyone but Botta, reflecting a devastating spin attack the man had just tried. Matthew was grateful, because that hit would have hurt.

Then, smaller but still there, a surge of mana from the blonde girl. She spun on her heel as it gathered around her, and instead of ducking away from Botta’s sword and into her way, Matthew let it knock him to the right, leaving the path between them completely clear. “Ray thrust!” she called out, and Matthew watched as a spinning disc cut through the air where he had just been, humming somewhat merrily as it sliced into Botta’s side before returning to the girl’s hand.

He’d never seen a weapon like that before. Matthew made a mental note to ask her about it when the battle was over. Then Matthew ran at Botta, Lloyd half a pace behind him. He could feel the Jupiter psynergy in Phaeton’s Blade peak, a second away from Unleashing and-

It cut out.

Matthew nearly stumbled at the sudden disappearance. Only the fact that he was in the middle of a battle kept him from whirling around and staring at the blade in Lloyd’s hand in disbelief. He’d never felt psynergy just…disappear like that. Only around a Psynergy Vortex had anything like that happened, and there wasn’t one around here. His split second distraction was enough for Botta to bat him away again, leaving Lloyd facing off against the man alone.

Botta leapt out of Lloyd’s range, shouting something, and suddenly the air shifted. Matthew froze as the earth shifted with it. “Earthly fangs, rage against those whom dare defy me!” Lloyd. Botta was targeting Lloyd, Matthew could feel it. “ **Stalagmite**!” Botta finished, but Matthew was already halfway to Lloyd. The ground was turning orange beneath his feet as the earth cracked and heaved at Botta’s command, but before it could slam into Lloyd Matthew bowled him out of the area of the Cast, the huge spire of rock barely missing them.

Matthew could see the other swordsman rushing at Botta from the corner of his eye as he dropped Lloyd, rolling in mid-air so he landed on his feet. He crouched there for a single millisecond, his muscles tense, before shooting forward, nearly parallel to the ground. The Sol Blade sent up sparks where it was dragged against the floor, creating a screeching noise that had both Botta and the older swordsman flinching. The swordsman exchanged a few blows with Botta before leaping backwards, clearing the way for Matthew, while Botta readied himself to block Matthew’s charge.

Unfortunately for him, Matthew had no intention of getting closer.

When Botta had cast that…whatever it was, it wasn’t a Cast, not the way Matthew thought of it. What did they call it here? A skill? Spell? Whatever. When Botta had cast it, Matthew had felt it, felt it not only in the earth Botta was manipulating but in the air too, and he’d figured out why his psynergy wasn’t working right. When they used mana, they weren’t drawing the energy from inside themselves; they were taking in the energy around them and changing its form, shaping it into what they wanted, before releasing it again. That’s why his psynergy had been backfiring on him all this time; he’d been taking a foreign energy and forcing it into the mana-heavy air, and the two energies hadn’t mixed. At all, resulting in various explosions.

But he knew what he was doing wrong now.

Matthew snatched at the energy in the air, skidding to a halt just outside of Botta’s range and swinging his sword up in an arc. “ **Gaia**!” he roared, shoving the mana he’d collected down into the earth, and watching in satisfaction as it erupted upwards below Botta’s feet.

Startled by Matthew’s sudden stop and completely unprepared for his Cast, Botta barely managed to block in time, but the strain was too much for his sword and it snapped in half. “Damn!” the man hissed as the Cast knocked him into the air, and then the other swordsman was suddenly there. Matthew blinked in surprise; he hadn’t even felt the man move, and hadn’t he been standing over next to the woman? How had he moved so quickly? The swordsman hit the airborne Botta hard enough to knock him into the wall, making him drop what was left of his sword. “Damn,” the man repeated, before lunging for the door the other strange man had left through.

Not really keen on prolonging the fight, no one chased after him.

The post battle silence was broken by Lloyd. “You just used magic.” He was gaping at him again, his grip around his swords lax. “You just…are you a half-elf?”

Matthew had no idea what a half-elf was. Or a plain regular elf, to be honest. “…No?” he said, wondering why he would have to be a half-elf to be able to Cast.

“But you just used magic!” the silver haired boy repeated. “Only elves and their descendants can use magic!”

“Okay,” Matthew agreed, because there wasn’t really anything else to say to that. “But I’m not a half-elf.” Since, you know, he had no idea what a half-elf was.

The older swordsman crossed his arms as his eyes narrowed. Matthew nearly shrunk under that ferocious gaze before remembering he had no reason to be scared of this guy. He’d helped against Botta, so even if he wasn’t an ally he certainly wasn’t an enemy. “It is possible you have some elven ancestry you are unaware of somewhere in your family history.”

Sure, they could go with that. Matthew only shrugged. “It’s possible,” he said. Except it wasn’t, because there was no such thing as elves on Weyard. Unless…maybe it was sort of like the difference between the Jenei and the Fori? Like how a child of an Adept would always be an Adept, and a child of the Fori would always be one of the ‘simple people’. Something like that? Ugh, this was too hard for him to figure out. “So…” he began, glancing around at the strangers in the room. “Who are you people?”

The boy crossed his arms. “We should be asking you that!” Matthew was startled at the amount of hostility in the boy’s voice. “Who are you and what are you doing here?”

“Genis!” Lloyd sounded surprised as well, staring at his—friend?

Though Matthew was startled by the hostility, he was no stranger to it, and he relaxed his stance and sheathed his sword, telegraphing the fact that he was no threat. The glint in the older swordsman eyes showed that one person, at least, had gotten the message. “The name’s Matthew,” he said, throwing the boy off balance with his willingness to answer questions. “What I’m doing here…that’s a harder question.”

“What’s so hard about it?” the swordsman asked, suspicion entering his eyes.

Matthew rubbed the back of his neck. “Uh…well, where, exactly, is here?”

He could tell none of them had been expecting that question.

* * *

He’d been having a normal day at home, training with his father at the Lookout Cabin. Tyrell and Garet had gone down to Patcher’s Place for some supplies, and so the father-son pair had decided beating each other with sticks was good way to pass the time. Not that either of them actually landed a blow on the other; Isaac was still a step above Matthew, but after his journey to end the Eclipse Matthew wasn’t that far behind him.

They hadn’t expected their training session to be crashed by an old enemy.

Matthew, never far from the Sol Blade, had instantly drawn it against Alex, but the Mercury Adept had knocked him aside with a wave of his hand. If he hadn’t dug his blade into the ground, he’d probably have been knocked clear off the plateau. What had followed had been the most terrifying battle he’d ever witnessed, and it was all he could do to stand his ground instead of being blown over by the clashing titans.

Isaac had clearly been holding back.

And then Alex had done…something. It had actually looked like what he normally did when he warped, with the ringing sound of a sword unsheathing and a bright flash of golden light, but it hadn’t warped Alex. It had…exploded, or something, washing over all three of them, and then they’d all been somewhere else. Matthew had no idea where it was, but it looked like the two fighting hadn’t even noticed the scenery change. He’d only had a second to look around before splitting pain had overtaken him, feeling like his every nerve was being shredded to pieces.

Then he’d woken up in a desert.

At first he’d wondered if Alex had somehow warped him to the remains of the Lamakan desert, but the snakes that had attacked him and hadn’t looked like any ant lion he’d ever heard of quickly dissuaded him from that idea. That, and the fact that his Cast had violently blown up in his face. Then Botta had showed up, spewing nonsense about mana fluctuations and summon spirits and Matthew’s Cast had again blown up in his face.

Then he’d woken up in a cell, where he’d spent a boring week until Lloyd had arrived.

* * *

He hadn’t told them that story, of course. He’d told them he’d been traveling with his father until they’d been attacked by bandits and separated. And that once separated from his father, Matthew had gotten horribly lost, partly because his dad had the map but mostly because he had a horrible sense of direction. Then Botta had shown up, and Botta had arrested him for ‘having odd mana’. The jerk.

The part about Botta was actually true, but judging by the skeptical look on the group’s faces, that was the part they believed the least.

Thankfully, they were now outside the creepy enemy base, the older woman more engrossed by the stone she’d taken from Botta’s broken sword than him. But they were still in a desert, which really sucked. “So, who are you?” Matthew prodded, slightly irked he still hadn’t gotten the answer to that simple question.

The blonde girl gasped, spinning around to face him, breaking off her quiet conversation with Lloyd. “That’s right, we forgot to introduce ourselves!” she chirped. “I’m Colette,” she smiled, and Matthew had to blink away afterimages of wind-blossoms that had magically appeared around her. She gestured to the small boy on her other side. “This is Genis, and Professor Raine is his older sister.” She then pointed to the older swordsman. “And that’s Mr. Kratos. He’s a mercenary!”

After hearing strange terms such as ‘mana’, ‘summon spirits’, ‘Chosen’, and ‘half-elf’, it was almost a relief to hear of a familiar concept like ‘mercenary’. “And Lloyd already introduced himself to you, right?”

Matthew nodded. “Nice to meet you Colette,” he said.

She giggled, leaning against Lloyd in a gesture that spoke volumes of their familiarity. “It’s nice to meet you too, Matthew.” Then, abruptly, she came up to him, standing on the tips of her toes to stare him in the face.

“Er,” Matthew managed to get out, trying to back away from the invasion of personal space, but Colette grabbed his arms to steady herself and trapped Matthew where he was. “What are you doing?”

She whirled around to face Lloyd and Genis, both of whom were staring at Colette like she’d grown wings. “Lloyd, Genis!” she called for their attention rather unnecessarily, dragging Matthew down so they were about the same height. Since she was at least a head shorter than Matthew, he had to bend over quite a bit. “Don’t you think we look like we could be siblings?”

Matthew’s quiet, disbelieving “What?” was lost beneath Lloyd’s loud agreement.

“Oh good, it wasn’t just me who was thinking it,” Lloyd said. “Because, it’s not like blond hair and blue eyes is a common combination, y’know?”

Genis let out a huff and crossed his arms. “Having the same eye and hair color doesn’t automatically make someone related,” he announced, and though Matthew thought all three of them were crazy for having this conversation in the first place, his eyes involuntarily slid to Raine. Who, for some odd reason, was now rubbing her face against the stone in her hand? Genis followed his gaze and scowled. “That doesn’t count,” he pouted. “We _are_ related. It makes sense for us to look alike. But just because you look like someone doesn’t make you related.”

Lloyd waved one of his hands. “Well of course Colette and Matthew aren’t _related_ ; they just look like they _could_ be, is all.”

“Can I stand up now?” Matthew reminded Colette that she had yet to let go of him, and for being a tiny female she was surprisingly strong. “My neck is starting to hurt.”

“Oops!” Colette hurriedly let go of his scarf, which was how she’d pulled him down in the first place. “Sorry Matthew.”

“S’okay,” he told her, and waited until she’d turned around again to surreptitiously rub his neck. Venus, what did that girl eat?

Kratos was staring at him suspiciously again. “We have almost reached Triet,” he stated calmly, voice giving away none of the feelings carefully hidden in his eyes. “What do you plan to do next?”

Matthew shrugged. “Dunno. Right now my plan consists of ‘buy a map’. After that, guess I’ll figure it out.” Matthew frowned at his shaky, one-step plan, missing Karis and Rief tremendously. Even though he’d led them, they had always been the ones with the plans. Apprehension slowly leaked into his mind, causing his shoulders to hunch the way they always did when he was unsure. And he was unsure and…scared. He was alone and stranded in a strange place he’d never been, on a world that definitely wasn’t Weyard and with no viable way home. “Crap,” he suddenly realized.

Raine finally looked up from her new pet rock. “Oh? What’s the matter?”

“I don’t have any money on me.” While true, even if he had any he doubted it would pass for whatever this world’s currency was.

“There isn’t any in your pack?” Lloyd asked, concern entering his voice.

Matthew shook his head. “Dad had all the money. Said it was so I didn’t run off and be irresponsible with it.” Also true; whenever they went down to Patcher’s Place Isaac never let Matthew had the money pouch, for that exact reason. Not that Matthew would have, but he supposed it was one of those father things. He ran one hand through his hair in frustration, his fingers catching on knots he still hadn’t been able to comb out. “Argh, dammit,” he hissed under his breath. There went his flimsy plan, and though it had only been a single step he still felt lost without it.

Feeble it had been, but it had still been a direction for him to go in, and now he felt adrift again. Much like he had right after the Eclipse had been activated, and Eoleo’s ship had been tossed around the ocean like it had been a leaf. Except this time, there was no Kraden to offer advice, no Karis and her little bits of wisdom, no Tyrell promising to have his back. Rief wasn’t around to calmly state that he’d gotten this far, Amiti wasn’t behind him to assure him he wouldn’t fail, Eoleo wasn’t here to give encouragement, Sveta wasn’t before him to tell him he would not be allowed to give up.

He heard nothing more of the conversation around him until someone caught his sleeve, and he looked down into Colette’s bright blue eyes. “Are you alright?” she asked. Matthew looked up and realized they’d reached a small desert trade town. Triet, he supposed. Colette confirmed it for him. “This is Triet, Matthew, and,” here she hesitated, looking over at Kratos and Raine before steeling herself. “If you don’t have any money, you can stay with us tonight.”

Matthew went to protest—he didn’t need charity, damn it, he could figure something out—but someone else did it for him. “Chosen,” Kratos said sternly. It was only a single word, something that was more of a title than anything, but Colette still wilted.

“But,” she began to argue.

Raine cut her off. “I’m afraid I must agree with Kratos on this matter, Colette. While it is true he doesn’t seem to be siding with the Desians,” another strange term that Matthew didn’t quite understand, though it sounded like they were a group of people dedicated to causing pain and chaos with the way the rest of the group spoke about them. “We do not know enough about him to trust him.”

Perfectly understandable. Smart, even. Matthew wished he’d been half as suspicious on his own journey; maybe then things wouldn’t have ended so disastrously. “But he helped Lloyd!” Colette argued, attempting to glare at her teacher but really only succeeding in pouting.

Matthew shook off her hand with a small laugh. “I’ll be fine,” he told her. “It won’t be the first time I’ve slept outside.”

Colette shook her head vehemently. “It’s not just that; aren’t you hungry too?”

Matthew couldn’t deny that. The food they gave him at the…Desian base, was what Lloyd had called it earlier. It hadn’t been very good. Or plentiful, and he hadn’t eaten anything all day, since he and Lloyd had broken out before mealtime.

Genis joined in next. “And, there are five of us, so we’ll have to rent three rooms anyways; why can’t we just let him use the extra bed?”

“Genis,” Raine sighed, but then it was Lloyd’s turn.

“If you’re really so worried about him being a threat and all, he can share a room with me.” Matthew saw a flaw in Lloyd’s reasoning, but since the teen was being kind enough to vouch for him he stayed silent about it out of respect for the dual swordsman’s pride. Not that it mattered, since Kratos pointed it out a few seconds later.

“If he was truly a threat to us, you would not be strong enough to stop him,” the mercenary said flatly.

Lloyd’s face turned red, but instead of snapping at the man like Matthew half expected him to, he turned the man’s words against him. “So you share a room with him,” he snipped. “Surely you could take him on if he suddenly decided to kill us all?”

There was more arguing after that, but Matthew wasn’t really paying attention, because now that Colette had brought attention to it Matthew realized he was really hungry. Not starving; he knew what that felt like, and this wasn’t it. He was just really, really hungry and his head hurt and he was maybe sort of going to-

He saw the ground rushing up to meet him before everything went black.


	2. It's a brand new world out there, and I'd like to go home now

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So, new world. Because apparently other worlds are a thing. Matthew would really just like to get home, but since he doesn't know how to do that he's stuck. At least he's not stuck alone; Lloyd and his friends are ridiculously friendly.
> 
> (Otherwise known as 'Matthew has joined the party')

An indeterminable time later, Matthew’s eyes snapped open to a bright light. He instantly shut them again, futilely trying to stave off the headache he could feel building. His throat was dry and his stomach clenched painfully. “You’re awake,” came a quiet voice. Kratos, probably. “Are you aware of what happened?”

“Yeah,” Matthew rasped out. “I was stupid enough to let myself get dehydrated in the middle of a desert. Got any water?” Kratos said nothing, just stepped forward and helped Matthew sit up. Internally, he cheered when he didn’t instantly flop over once the mercenary stopped supporting him. Cracking open his eyes, he took the cup held out to him and began to take slow sips of the slightly lukewarm water.

“You seem familiar with dehydration,” Kratos said slowly, sitting on the edge of the other bed in the room. The mercenary never took his eyes off of him; it was slightly unnerving.

Matthew nodded, still slowly drinking the water. It felt like heaven. “Not the first time I’ve been this stupid,” he confirmed. “How long was I out for?”

“It is the morning after we arrived in Triet,” Kratos stated. “Less than twelve hours, as it was near evening when we first arrived.” His eyes narrowed. “If you are aware of the dangers of dehydration, why did you not speak up sooner? You frightened the others with your collapse.”

“I thought it was a stress headache,” Matthew admitted quietly. “There was a lot going on, and I didn’t even think about the fact that I hadn’t eaten or drank anything all day. Not until Colette pointed it out.” He finished off the water and placed the cup on the bedside table, where both his pack and his scarf lay. His boots, sword, and jacket weren’t far either, which meant they either believed he wasn’t an enemy or that he wasn’t a threat to them like this. “Thank you.”

Kratos simply nodded before standing to leave. “If you feel well enough, I believe the children would like to speak with you before we leave.”

“I’ll be down in a few minutes,” Matthew said. “As soon as I get my head together.” The mercenary gave him another nod before exiting the room. For a long moment, Matthew simply sat on the bed, thoughts running through his head. First and foremost, what had happened to his father? Was he still fighting Alex in that dead-feeling landscape, or was he here on this strange world with him? Did that mean Alex would be here too? He hoped not.

What did he do now? He had no knowledge of this place; he didn’t even know what it was called. How was he supposed to avoid those Desian guys when he didn’t even really know who the hell they were? This was making his head hurt again.

Finally getting out of bed, he put on his boots before staring speculatively at his jacket and scarf. It was hot here in the middle of the desert, yes, but he’d never not worn them before. Finally, he shoved his jacket into his pack and wound his scarf around his neck. His shirt was long sleeved, but it didn’t cover his neck, and he’d rather be hot than sunburned. He fixed his sword to his back before slinging his pack over his shoulder, ready to face whatever this world had to offer.

Down the stairs, in the main part of the inn, Lloyd, Genis, and Colette were sitting around a table, eating breakfast. Matthew’s stomach took the time to remind him that it was still empty. “Good morning,” he said cheerily, trying to ignore whatever it was that smelled really good.

Colette sprang up from her seat, tripping in her haste to rush over to him. Almost as if he’d been expecting her to fall, Lloyd caught her easily. “Careful,” he warned her, and she nodded once before reaching Matthew and tugging him over to their table.

“Should you be standing?” she fretted, forcing him to sit down next to Lloyd. She buzzed around him, reminding him of an anxious Flint; the Djinn could never sit still when one of his humans were injured, and if they had fevers, well. Flint would get banned from the house. “You just fell over; Mr. Kratos said it was because you were dehydrated but you should probably eat something too just in case that was part of the reason. Here,” she shoved something in front of him. It looked like porridge, so that’s what he was going to call it. “Eat,” she commanded, and he didn’t have any willpower to resist that order.

Colette suddenly gasped before racing out the door, returning quickly with a near over-flowing canteen that she shoved into his hands. “You should be drinking more water, right? Since you collapsed yesterday because you hadn’t drank any. More water’s good, right?”

“Yeah,” Matthew said, amused at just how much she sounded like Flint right now. “But really, I’m alright now. Sorry for worrying you.”

Genis snickered. “Lloyd thought you were dying.”

“I did not!” Lloyd squawked. “I just thought he might have gotten injured or something and hadn’t told us about it.”

Colette giggled. “That sounds like something _you_ would do.”

“I would not!”

Matthew smiled, content to listen to the younger kids banter and snap at each other playfully. It was nice to hear them argue without any venom in their voices; it reminded him of Amiti and Eoleo, once they’d gotten over their differences.

And just like that, the good feeling was gone.

“Hey, are you okay?” Lloyd asked, peering at his face.

Matthew hummed in affirmation, his spoon still in his mouth. “Just thinking about what I’ll be doing next,” he told them after swallowing his food. “Gotta find out where I’m going, for one.”

Lloyd, Genis, and Colette exchanged a Look that spoke of a headache for Raine and Kratos. “Well,” Genis began slowly. “You’re looking for your dad, right?”

Matthew nodded. That was top priority, finding out if his dad was on this world or not.

Colette clasped her hands together, something that seemed to be a nervous tick for her. “And, the three of us were talking earlier. You’re a really good swordsman, but it’s dangerous to travel Sylvarant by yourself.” Sylvarant…was that what the name of this world was? “So we were thinking, maybe you could travel with us. There’s safety in numbers, after all. And we’re going all over the world! I’m sure you’ll be able to find your father.”

Matthew stared at the three hopeful faces in front of him and found his mind curiously blank. “Are you sure Kratos and Raine would be alright with me coming along?” he asked, because if they were offering, he really didn’t think it was wise to wander around by himself.

“Leave them to us,” Lloyd said confidently, and then all three children scurried over to where Raine was engrossed in a book. Matthew had to laugh at the expression on her face when they ambushed her. It looked almost like a litter of puppies batting at a wide-eyed owl. It was _adorable_ , there was no other word for it.

Raine hardly put up any resistance; Kratos lasted three minutes longer. Matthew counted, and despite the fact that Matthew had figured Colette was the instigator of this jaunt around the world, it was Lloyd Kratos eventually gave in to. Further evidence for the related theory.

Evidence against the relation theory; no one seemed to be very comfortable with the mercenary, aside from Colette. Raine, Genis, Lloyd and Colette all seemed to orbit around each other with the ease that came from having known one another for a very long time. Kratos hovered on the edges of the group dynamics, close enough to not drift away but far enough to not be dragged in.

Scooping the last of his breakfast out of the bowl, he watched Kratos come closer from the corner of his eye, leaving the celebrating teens by Raine. “Are you sure you wish to travel with us?” he asked stiffly. “We are not merely traveling; the Chosen,” Matthew assumed that was Colette, “is undertaking the Journey of Regeneration.” That sounded Big and Important. “Though simply leaving town could be considered a dangerous endeavor for some, a swordsman of your skill could travel without much complications.”

Matthew smiled up at the man. “Don’t want me around?” he asked, not really offended. The man had three naïve children and a support mage to guard, and was probably less than pleased by this new charge.

The man’s face betrayed no emotion. “I thought I would make it clear that this is no mere field trip.” He sounded a bit annoyed as he said that. “It will be dangerous, far more so than traveling alone would, and there will be times we will actively seek out confrontation.”

Matthew interrupted Kratos before the man could start a long-winded lecture. “I know how to fight, Kratos, and I’m not one to run from a battle no matter how hopeless it might seem.” A four-armed form flashed across his mind before he shoved the memory back down into the dark pits it had surfaced from. “Besides,” he tugged on his bangs, grimacing slightly at the sweat he could feel on his forehead. And he was still inside, too. It must be boiling outside. “I’m…not really used to traveling alone, and I’d rather avoid doing so.”

Kratos didn’t ask for clarification, just nodded before moving on. “Then prepare yourself. We’ll be leaving shortly.”

“Sure,” Matthew said, watching the man walk away before getting up himself and heading over to the other teens. “So,” he smiled at them, already more at ease knowing he didn’t have to travel alone. “Where are we headed?”

“We’re going to the Triet Ruins,” Colette informed him. “After we buy Lloyd some new swords.”

Matthew looked at Lloyd in surprise, finally noticing the other teen wasn’t wearing the swords he’d given him yesterday. “Something wrong with the ones I gave you?” He wondered if there was something off with the balance, or if the swords had started rejecting him. Or maybe the teen found the weight too different from his toys to fight effectively? He hadn’t seemed to have had any problems using them against Botta though…

Lloyd shook his head. “No, they’re great, but don’t you want them back?”

…Oh. Matthew frowned. “Well yeah, eventually. But we’ll be traveling together for a while, so I don’t mind letting you borrow them.”

“Really?”

“Course. It’s not like I can use them.” He shifted so the hilt of the Sol Blade was visible over his shoulder. “I’ve got this sword and I can’t dual-wield anyways, even if I wanted to.” Then, he remembered something he’d forgotten to do. “Speaking of weapons, what are those spinning disc things you were using yesterday Colette?”

“My…? You mean my chakrams?” Colette brought out the weapons in question as Lloyd went off somewhere, Matthew not really paying attention to the other boy as he studied the metal discs in Colette’s hands.

“Is that what they’re called? I’ve never seen them before now.” He looked at her and she made a ‘go ahead’ gesture, so he picked one up. “How do you get them to come back to you after you’ve thrown them?” He wondered, scrutinizing the metal. It was very well made, smooth to the touch with not a single scratch nor dent anywhere, allowing it to cut through the air.

Colette giggled at the expression on his face. “It’s partly to do with how much force and accuracy I throw them with, and partly to do with mana,” she explained. “I’ve been using them for a really long time, channeling my mana through them all the while. So once I throw them and they bounce off my target, I use the mana that’s been absorbed by them to call them back to me. Sometimes I can even make them swerve to the side and come at my target from an unexpected angle, but that’s harder.”

“Huh,” Matthew said absently, poking the chakram in his hand with his newly acquired mana-sense, then poking at Colette. Sure enough, the disc faintly felt like the girl in front of him, but he could only sense it because he was looking for it. He wondered if Genis’ kendama felt the same way.

Kratos and Raine came over with Lloyd trailing behind them, ending their conversation. “Ready to go?” Raine asked, a rather full bag over her shoulders.

The others nodded, but Matthew couldn’t help staring at Raine, trying to figure out how she hadn’t fallen over backwards yet. “Do you want some help?” he offered, wondering why she hadn’t snapped like a twig under the weight of what looked like all the groups traveling equipment, as well as some extra stuff he was sure she didn’t need but looked unwilling to part with.

“I’ll be quite alright,” she told him, adjusting the straps. “I’m not much of a frontline fighter, so it makes sense for me to carry our things.”

“But it looks really heavy,” Matthew argued. “Let me at least take a few of the larger things.” Like the cooking pot that was at least half the weight of the pack, and the tent that, while probably not very heavy, was certainly bulky and uncomfortable looking.

Raine was reluctant but eventually relented. “I suppose…” She handed over both items and he slung his own pack off his shoulders. She frowned as he waved away the ties to connect them to his pack. “How do intend to carry them if you don’t…” she trailed off as he shoved both items into his noticeably smaller bag, not adding anything to its weight and it not even bulging to show anything in it. “How did you do that?”

Matthew shrugged, pulling his pack back on. “Dad gave it to me; I don’t know how it works. It just does.”

“Shall we?” Kratos interrupted, and Matthew had never been so grateful for such a timely intervention, because the light that had appeared in Raine’s eyes terrified him.

* * *

The desert was hot, but having traveled inside an active volcano made Matthew surprisingly resistant to heat. Colette seemed to not even notice the oppressive feeling of _heat_ , and Matthew couldn’t tell what Kratos was thinking. The mercenary didn't appear to be suffering though. Raine and Genis didn’t seem to like the heat, but they were dealing with it in silence at least.

Consequently, the only one to voice complaints was Lloyd.

“It’s too hot,” he groaned, wiping sweat off his brow. “When does this desert end?”

“If you’re that hot, take off your jacket,” Matthew snapped, irritated beyond belief at him.

“But then I’ll burn!” Lloyd whined, and Matthew nearly snarled at him. He was not in a very good mood right now, and he probably wouldn’t be until he got off the sand. Stupid sand, constantly shifting around even when nothing was there but the wind and making him jumpy. He hated sand. Hated it _so_ much.

“Complaining is doing nothing but wasting your energy,” he growled, attempting to reign in his temper. He didn’t want to start using his psynergy by accident and cause explosions. That would be bad. “So shut up.”

He was trying, he really was.

Sometimes, he forgot he wasn’t talking to Tyrell, Lloyd acted like him so much. Right down to the magic ability to make him completely irritated with a few words and yet still be his best friend at the same time. How did that even work?

Matthew felt Colette’s worried gaze on his back and obligingly took a swig of water from the canteen he held. She’d been worried about him getting dehydrated again, so he’d gotten into the habit of taking a small drink of water every time he caught her staring. It was helping to remind him, so he didn’t point out to her that he could feel her stares.

Lloyd sighed. “I’m so sick of this desert,” he complained.

Fearing for Lloyd’s health if he stayed within Matthew’s hearing range, Colette pulled him ahead by his arm. “Do not wander too far ahead,” Kratos reprimanded. “There are monsters about.”

“We can take ‘em,” Lloyd boasted, and Matthew closed his eyes and breathed deeply. He wished he still had his patience, but Eoleo and Amiti had chased it away and it had never come back. “Hey, are those the ruins?”

Lloyd’s question caused Matthew to open his eyes and look where the teen was pointing. Barely visible through the heatwaves, there was a hazy outline of a building. Matthew hoped they were the ruins, because he was sick of the heat, the sand, the endless shifting beneath his feet. He needed something stable to stand on.

Closer inspection revealed that the broken building was indeed the ruins they were headed for, and Matthew breathed a sigh of relief when he felt stone beneath his feet. “Are you alright?” Colette asked as Genis began to tease Lloyd.

“Yeah. Just not a big fan of sand.” Matthew grimaced. “Could never get used to the way the ground shifts around just by treading on it.”

“Be on your guard!” Kratos commanded, and the Sol Blade leapt into Matthew’s hand as strange red orbs brimming with the untamed energy of fire shot out of the ruins. He was sure that an average traveler would have been overwhelmed by the not-quite creatures, but it was two on six; two orbs against six trained fighters, no matter how poorly trained some of those fighters were. (Lloyd’s stance was making him cringe, and there were so many holes in his guard it resembled a sieve.) The orbs stood no chance, and Matthew only had to bat at one when it got too close to Raine for his comfort.

He hadn’t bothered to check his strength, and his blow shattered the orb, covering him in dust and making him the recipient of five disbelieving stares. “What?” he snapped defensively, suddenly aware that what he considered normal was very much not to others.

“You completely shattered it.” Lloyd sounded like he couldn’t believe his eyes. “How did you do that?”

A quick glance at the remains of the second orb showed why they were so surprised; it lay in large chunks at Kratos’ feet, looking like a disassembled puzzle, whereas the one he’d hit was blowing away on the breeze and mixing in with the desert, becoming indistinguishable from the surrounding landscape.

“I hit it really hard,” Matthew said dryly. Not even as hard as he was able to, in fact. But these orbs were fragile, and they’d looked minutes away from falling to pieces anyways. Really, he was just speeding up the inevitable.

There was suspicion in the mercenary’s eyes again, but he said nothing.

Maniacal laughter from up ahead caught everyone’s attention. Genis, oddly enough, looked pained. “Oh no,” he groaned, racing forward. “Raine, stop it!”

Lloyd and Colette followed behind him. “What about the professor?” Lloyd demanded to know as they disappeared into the ruins.

Kratos stopped him from following more than a few steps. “You must learn to hold back your strength,” he admonished, and Matthew blinked in surprise. That hadn’t been what he’d expected to hear. “Either hold back your strength, or refrain from entering battles. If you continue to fight as you just showed, the others will not get the experience they need to fight the monsters we are sure to encounter later.”

Matthew understood now. “And that will be a problem.” Unfortunately, so would Matthew holding back. He’d never really had to do that before, because the monsters on Weyard had gotten ferocious over the past two years after the Eclipse had ended and speed was a priority in dispatching them. He hadn’t needed to hold back so his friends could get better either, because they’d grown at the same time he had and that hadn’t been an issue.

Standing completely outside the battles was even less of an option. Matthew was notoriously bad at leaving people to fend for themselves, especially when he could do something to help them. He followed behind Kratos as the man led the way to where their voices were coming from. Maybe he could stand back and guard Raine and Genis. The few battles he’d fought with them had shown that they mostly stood back and flung spells at their opponents, so if he kept anything from reaching the two of them, he would still be helping, but not hindering growth. That could work.

“Look at this slab covering the entrance!” he arrived just in time to hear Raine say. “It’s clearly of a different composition than the surrounding stone!” She was on her knees, face nearly flat against the ground as she examined the offending stone in question. She laughed again. “It’s just as I thought!” she crowed, and Matthew turned to the slab to see what was so interesting about it…and nearly had a heart attack. There, at the top of the slab of not-stone, were a few lines of ancient symbols. Ancient symbols he _recognized_.

He dropped to his own knees beside the symbols, rooting around in his pack for his book. Pulling it out, he could feel Kratos’ attention on him again, though thankfully the three teens were more concerned with Raine’s ramblings about polycarbonate and how it defended against magic. Matthew was tempted to ask her to demonstrate, or try himself, because did it really? But there were more important things to be doing.

He flipped open the Glyph Book and compared the two writings. He glanced back and forth a few times, trying to disprove what he was seeing, but every look just confirmed his first thought. The language matched. How had writings from ancient Weyard ended up here, in Sylvaranti ruins?

“Is she always like this?” he heard Kratos ask.

Genis sighed. “And I’ve been trying so hard to hide it.”

“I only wish I was better versed in the angelic language,” Raine lamented, and Matthew jumped when he realized she’d suddenly appeared right next to him, staring at the characters carved on the polycarbonate slab. “If only I could read what it said!” She was staring at the few sentences with such longing, Matthew couldn’t help but translate for her. It was already second nature to him, to read ancient writings aloud and puzzle over their meaning.

“This here,” he began, pointing with his free hand at the single character in the center of a circle created by three triangles. “This is the symbol for ‘fire’.” He had everyone’s attention now, not just Raine’s. “The character’s above it state, ‘Within these volcanic chambers lies Efreet’s throne; be warned, intruders, for arrogance shall be met with Hell’s fire’.” Matthew frowned, staring at the last two sentences in apprehension. “This part here looks like it was added later; the character for fire is written differently, see?” Raine nodded eagerly.

“What does that last part say?” she demanded, fire burning in her eyes. Matthew noticed, with some trepidation, that she was looking at the Glyph Book, and he reflexively tightened his grip.

“It says,” Matthew’s frown deepened. “’Beware the rain of Judgement from above, Chosen. It burns fiercer than Efreet’s Hellfire’. But I have no idea what that means.”

Kratos cleared his throat, and attention transferred over to the mercenary. “Perhaps it is referencing the fires that ravaged this place when it was still standing, though I do not know why they warned the Chosen, specifically. But pondering past events is not what brought us here.”

“Yes, of course.” Raine stood and brushed sand of her robes, walking over to a pedestal Matthew hadn’t noticed Colette was standing next to. “You mentioned your family’s crest?”

“Oh, yes!” Colette motioned to the pedestal. “Does that mean this is the seal?”

Raine peered at the pedestal as Matthew ran a hand over the polycarbonate. It was almost unnaturally smooth, and he couldn’t feel it through his connection with the earth. It was there, he could feel its weight in the surrounding stone, but the polycarbonate slab itself wasn’t registering in his radar. It was unnerving. “This depression reads ‘oracle stone’,” Raine mused, turning to Colette. “I believe placing your hand there should reveal the entrance.”

“Really?” Lloyd sounded skeptical as Matthew stood, placing the Glyph Book back in his bag.

Raine nodded confidently. “This stone is enchanted with magic designed to identify the Chosen.” There was that title again. Matthew was going to have to find out what it meant one of these days. Preferably in a way that wouldn’t tip off Kratos that he wasn’t from here. That man scared him. “There’s no question about it.”

“Okay!” Colette chirped, touching the pedestal. The second she did, Matthew felt a twist of mana in the air, twirling around the stone pedestal before dispersing. Then the entrance to the stairwell he’d felt beneath the earth slid open, and he shivered as he realized that the polycarbonate was completely invisible to his senses. He was unable to find it even though it had completely disappeared beneath the earth. “Wow, it opened! I guess I really am the Chosen!”

Matthew paused in his inspection of the stairway. Had…had she sounded _disappointed?_ The ‘Chosen’, whatever that was…did she not want to be it?

Lloyd sighed fondly. “Colette.”

“Yes, I think we all knew that,” Genis finished for him, a grin on his face.

Raine let loose her maniacal laughter again. “Come, quickly! The ruins won’t explore themselves!”

Watching her descend into monster infested ruins brimming with fire mana and remembering the light in her eyes as she’d stared at his pack and the Glyph Book earlier, Matthew came to a conclusion about Raine Sage. “That woman scares me,” he declared, following behind Lloyd.

“The professor?” he asked, confused. “Why?” Matthew gestured at the elder Sage, who was still giggling madly, and Lloyd grimaced. “Point taken.”

“She isn’t that bad,” Genis tried to defend his sister. “She just gets…over excited really easily when it comes to ruins and ancient artifacts.”

Matthew was distracted by a flare of fire mana near Lloyd. “What was that?”

“What was what?” Lloyd turned to face him, confused, and tripped on the last stair. “Ow.”

“Lloyd!” Colette gasped, pushing past Matthew and tripping on the last stair. Lloyd, who had just began to pick himself up, let out another whoosh of air as she landed on top of him. “Oh, I’m so sorry! Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Lloyd groaned. “Please get off of me.”

“Ah! I’m so sorry!” Chuckling, Matthew helped the both of them up, then realized where he’d felt that odd mana flare before.

“Hey, Lloyd? Can I see your ring?”

Lloyd blinked, confused. “My what?”

“The ring you used to blow us out of the cells,” Matthew clarified. “The Sorcerer’s Ring.”

“You still have that?” Genis asked. “Didn’t Colette take it back from you after she received the Oracle?”

“No,” Lloyd said, reaching into his pocket.

“I was going too, but I got distracted by the professor,” Colette admitted. “Why do you want to see it?”

By that time, Lloyd had pulled out the ring and could answer that question himself. “It changed back.”

“Changed?” Genis looked from Lloyd to Matthew. “What do you mean ‘changed’?”

“When we were breaking out of the Desian base, the Sorcerer’s Ring changed for some reason,” Lloyd explained as he handed it to Matthew. “It wasn’t fire anymore.”

Matthew nodded, scrutinizing the ring in his hand closely. “It was some form of lightning,” he confirmed. “The fire was still there, just a bit, but the lightning was… _more._ It’s kind of the opposite now. The lightning is still there, but the fire is the most prominent attribute now.”

Raine’s sudden appearance surprised him less this time. “Fascinating,” she breathed, eyes focused on the ring. Wisely, Matthew handed it over without prompting so she could sense it for herself. “And it did this in the base?”

“Yeah, except it got all tingly and static-y,” Lloyd said.

“Like lightning,” Matthew felt the need to reaffirm. It was odd though…he was getting better at sensing mana the more he exposed himself to it. Lloyd felt like a tiny pool, slowly growing with every battle. Colette was expanding at a much faster rate, practically pulling in the surrounding mana to add to her ever growing ocean. Genis and Raine felt different, probably due to their status as elves, not humans. Kratos felt muted, like he had a large lake and was forcibly shrinking it to resemble Lloyd’s pool. It was probably how he was limiting himself, making it so that the others could get experience. It made Matthew want to sneeze.

And the mana he was sensing from the Sorcerer’s Ring…didn’t feel like mana. Not completely. It was coated in mana, almost like Colette’s chakrams. It pulled mana from the surrounding air to work, like the spells did here. But the inside, the tiny spark that created the spells themselves, felt more like…like psynergy. But that was impossible.

Right?

As Raine handed the ring back to the Lloyd rather reluctantly, Matthew figured asking would be harmless. “Where did you even get that thing?”

“From Martel Temple,” Colette chirped. She was met by a blank stare from Matthew, who had no idea what or where that was. “It’s a temple near Iselia.” Still had no idea where that was…he should buy a map the next chance he got. “It’s where I received the Oracle and began the Journey of Regeneration.” Right, that Big Important Thing Kratos had told him about.

Maybe he should buy a history book as well.

Big Important Things had a tendency to appear in history books.

“It’s a tool vital to the Chosen’s success,” she finished, unaware that Matthew was no longer paying attention.

“And you decided to let Lloyd hang onto it?” Genis teased. At least, it sounded like teasing, but to Matthew’s ears it also sounded a bit…harsh.

“Hey!” Lloyd complained, but it was good-natured in origin; it appeared such exchanges were a staple in their friendship.

As Lloyd chased Genis off—not too far, as both were being cautious of monsters for once—Matthew asked Colette one last question. “So, it’s an artifact? Something ancient?”

She smiled up at him. “Yes! Generations of Chosen before me have used it to complete the trials before them, so they can regenerate the world!”

Regenerate the world?! This…this was much, much bigger than he thought it had been. Just, what. Regenerate the world…that sounded almost like what had happened to Weyard, when Alchemy had been sealed. Was that what was going on? Wait, _generations_? Plural? This had happened before? This world needed to be regenerated _multiple times_? What higher entity created a world like that!?

He refrained from asking such questions aloud, knowing that obvious questions such as that would make more than just Kratos suspicious.

And the Sorcerer’s Ring was an artifact. It had existed for centuries. And it held trace amounts of psynergy.

A psynergetic ring and words written in the language of the Ancient Jenei. What connection did Sylvarant hold with Weyard? There had to be a connection; twice was not a coincidence, no matter what Rief tried to argue.

Ugh, this was too much for his head. He massaged his temple, and was surprised when Kratos placed a canteen in front of his face. “It is unwise to get dehydrated in here,” he said quietly. “Drink more if your headache is returning.”

“Ah, yeah,” he said, taking a swig from the canteen and grimacing at the lukewarm water that had absorbed the leather taste of the canteen. He missed Rief’s permafrost containers; they’d been freezing to touch with bare hands, but they’d kept water cool and fresh. What was that saying? You never know what you’ve had until you’ve lost it? Something like that. “Here.” He handed the canteen back to the mercenary and received a nod.

Startled yelps from up ahead broke their quiet camaraderie, and both swordsmen quickened their strides to see Lloyd, Genis, and Colette attempting to fend off two flying firebirds and another fire orb. Matthew nearly jumped into the battle before remembering Kratos’ earlier words. Pulling out his sword, he turned to the mercenary. “I’ll guard Genis and Raine, so don’t worry about them being defenseless.”

“Holding back not your style?” the man smirked—he smirked! He had emotions after all—knowingly.

“Not anywhere in my encyclopedia,” Matthew confirmed, lunging forward and intercepting a fireball that had been heading for Genis. “Where’s Raine?” he asked, not seeing her anywhere on the battlefield.

Genis shook his head. “Somewhere ahead. She saw some mural on the wall and took off.”

“Damn,” Matthew hissed. “How good at defending is she?” Depending on Genis’ answer, he might have to go after her.

Genis threw out a water spell with a cry of “ _Aqua Edge!_ ” before answering. “Without someone to give her time to cast spells? A little better than Lloyd.” Matthew cringed at the mere mention of Lloyd’s terrible guard, and then winced as he realized what that meant for Raine, alone in a monster infested ruin. If she got attacked, she was done for.

He blocked an attack run by one of the birds with the flat of his sword and nearly laughed at the cross-eyed expression it adopted as it backed away before he turned back to Genis. “Tell Kratos where I went.” Then he shot down the hallway, using his sword to vault himself over the orb in his way, kicking it into the ground for good measure. He hoped Raine hadn’t been found by a monster.

His hope was in vain, spotting a hulking red golem wielding a flaming sword cornering the elder Sage against the wall. In a move that was born more of fear and desperation than any real planning, Matthew snatched at the burning mana in the air and bashed it towards the golem. The result was a bastardized version of Megiddo that smacked into the golem at considerable speed. Screeching, the monster turned around in time for Matthew to plunge the Sol Blade through its chest, the ancient blade cutting through the stone and metal like they were nothing more than paper.

Its dying scream was disturbingly human-like, and Matthew flinched at the sound, thrown back two years for an instant. The golem was no longer red to his eyes, but a dark black that seemed to shift and twist into horrible shapes-

“Matthew? Are you alright?” Raine’s quiet question snapped him out of his flashback, and he gave her a shaky nod.

“Just…wasn’t expecting a sound like that,” he told her. There was no reason to air his past to these people; it wasn’t like they were friends.

“It was awfully human-like,” Raine admitted. “And, thank you. If you had not arrived when you had I would be in worse shape than I am right now.”

Letting out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, Matthew turned to the teacher. “What were you thinking, wandering off your own like that?” He’d expected to have to give this speech to someone eventually; but he’d thought it would’ve been Lloyd, or Genis, or Colette that he was giving it to. Not to one of the two adults in the party. Why did he still have to be the responsible one?

Raine didn’t even look ashamed as she spun around to face the wall she’d been pinned against. “Look!” she motioned to the relief upon the wall, and despite his better judgement Matthew was intrigued by the creature depicted there. Based on the scale of the other items in the mural, the creature was gigantic, the size of the Chaos Chimera. The creature had a pair of wings that were almost bat-like, with strange appendages curving around its shoulders. It was wearing a pair of gauntlets that protected its three fingers, and though its upper body was human-like in appearance, it had no legs, just a snake-like tail that accounted for over half its height. “I believe this is Efreet, the Great Spirit of fire,” she proclaimed.

Matthew tuned out her ramblings, focusing more on the carving of Efreet. He’d could swear he’d seen this creature before, but he knew that was impossible. Weyard had no summons like it, and he was new to Sylvarant. But it just looked so _familiar._ He had no idea where he could have seen it before; the ruins in Weyard had statues and murals, but he had meticulously copied each one he’d seen in his encyclopedia and none matched the one in front of him.

He pulled an empty book out of his pack, quickly sketching the relief. Raine made an interested noise, and he angled the book so she could see what he was doing. “Do you do this regularly?” she asked, intrigued.

Matthew nodded. “Yeah, pretty much everywhere I go. The world’s a large place, after all, and I like having a way to record all I’ve seen so I don’t forget it. You never know what might come in handy.”

“Do you have another book?”

“No, sorry. It was full, so I left it at home.” Lies, but there was no way Matthew was going to show it to her. It was full of places and people native to Weyard, and he wasn’t stupid.

“Raine! Matthew!” Genis ran up to them and threw his arms around his sister. Matthew wondered why, until he realized that the corpse of the golem was still laying at his feet and Genis had probably worried that Raine had gotten injured.

“I’m alright Genis,” Raine assured him. Looking her brother over, she frowned. “You look a bit scorched though.”

Genis shrugged off her concern. “I got grazed by a firebird,” he explained. “It’s fine though, Kratos healed the burn well enough. Oh, and I figured out Icicle!” The pride in his voice told Matthew he’d been having trouble with that spell until now.

“That explains the frost,” Raine remarked, brushing snow off his shoulders. “And the rest of you?”

“Minor injuries,” Kratos replied calmly. “And yourselves?”

Matthew shook his head. “I got here in time.” He said nothing more, but Kratos glanced down at the golem with a single wound and a large scorch mark and drew his own conclusions. Probably the right ones, because the mercenary was very observant like that. “So, what now?”

“We must make our way to the depths of the ruins, where we will find the Seal of Fire,” Raine explained. “There, the Chosen will undergo the first trial of the Journey of Regeneration.”

Yeah, he really needed a history book. Or maybe Raine could teach him. Colette had said she was a teacher, right? Maybe if he told her he had never had a formal education, she’d teach him the things he didn’t know without anyone getting suspicious. Not that that would be a lie either. His parents had taught him the things they thought were worth knowing.

He knew how to fight, and cook, and patch holes in his clothes. His mom had taught him a blanket history of Weyard, and his dad had taught him that knitting was not just for females. And also taught him how to knit. Isaac had tried to teach Jenna too, but she’d set most of the yarn on fire after she’d tangled it into a large knot and couldn’t get it untangled. His mother had henceforth been banned from the knitting lessons. And the sewing ones. And really anything that counted as a household chore.

Math was a necessary evil because of money, but basic addition and subtraction was his limit. Aside from that, he was pretty much clueless as to everything else.

“Odd place for a torch,” he heard Genis muse, and his attention wandered back to the group.

“I doubt this place was always a volcanic chamber,” Kratos remarked dryly. “People would need some way to see, and a torch is a good piece of equipment to accomplish that.”

“I’m with Genis,” Matthew said absently, staring at the torch that had caught Genis’ attention. “This place was Efreet’s temple long before it was the Seal of Fire, so I’m betting the lava _has_ always been here. So why the torch?”

“Maybe if we light it, something will happen?” Lloyd suggested.

Colette clapped her hands together. “I bet that’s what the Sorcerer’s Ring is for!” She was practically emitting rays of sunshine, her smile was so bright.

“No harm in trying,” Raine agreed, and there was that flare of mana as Lloyd readied the ring, though now that he was looking for it Matthew could feel that tiny spark of psynergy that ignited the mana into flame.

When the torch caught fire, another stairway appeared that led deeper into the ancient temple. “Well,” Matthew broke the silence that had fallen on the group. “That answers _that_ question.”

Raine’s eyes were gleaming with that unholy light again.


	3. God is real, and he's a giant fire monster who enjoys playing volleyball with the sun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Matthew is once again reminded just how far out of the loop he is, when Colette prays to the Goddess Martel. At least he's not the only one shocked by her growing wings.
> 
> Also, Efreet reminds him too much of Tyrell and he possibly befriends an assassin. When did his life get so weird?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Life is super crazy right now, right? I work at Amazon, and everything's going INSANE in there, it's nuts. The Corona virus is ending the world, but Amazon's still going. Anyways, here's something to relieve the boredom of all of you stuck at home.

A multitude of fire based puzzles later, and Matthew was in a fantastic mood. He loved puzzles. He was not, however, keen on the warp panel, and the second all the bits and pieces that made up him were through the warp, he staggered over to the side of the room and lost the small lunch Genis had made everyone earlier. Colette bounced over to him, none the worse for wear. “Are you okay?”

“I don’t like that thing,” Matthew groaned. “Do you think Efreet would be offended if I blasted through the wall to get out of here?”

Raine whirled on her heel to face him. “You’ll do no such thing!” she admonished. “This temple was built by ancient magitechnology! To break such a thing would be a crime!”

“Ugh,” Matthew whined. Just the thought of having to go through the warp pad again was enough to make his stomach rebel. He was content to lean against the wall and watch everyone else approach the altar in the center of the room, until it started leaking large amounts of mana; so much, in fact, that it became visible to the naked eye. He pushed off from the wall and stumbled over to the rest of them in time to flinch back from the eruption of fire that took the form of a large, cat-like creature. That was also on fire.

“A Ktugach!” someone yelled. Matthew didn’t really care what it was called, simply sidestepping out of the way of a rather large fireball. Only then did he notice the jagged spikes arrayed on its head and shoulders, mostly hidden by the dancing flames it was coated in. “Be on guard for the spikes it hides in its flames!” Oh, Kratos was the one speaking. Matthew supposed that made sense, since the mercenary had probably traveled the world before and encountered all sorts of creatures.

Matthew ducked to the side again as Colette’s chakrams went whizzing past his head, maneuvering around so he stood between the Ktugach and the Sage siblings, a solid wall that wouldn’t move for anything. “Matthew, what are-?”

He cut off Raine’s question with one of his own. “Do you have any ice spells in your arsenal? Any water attacks you try are just going to evaporate before they even get close.”

“I have Icicle,” Genis offered. “But that’s it. Raine is more of a support mage than a fighter.”

Matthew nodded; he’d noticed that. “Alright, Genis, use Icicle as much as you can. None of your other spells will do anything to it. Raine, you have a healing spell, right?”

Raine nodded as Matthew blocked a tail swipe from the Ktugach, but her verbal answer was drowned out by an enraged roar from the giant cat as Lloyd stabbed it in the side. Kratos hit its other side a second later, making the Ktugach roar again and spin rapidly around, looking like it was an agitated housecat being attacked by bees.

“Good,” he answered anyways. “Because I have a feeling we’re going to be needing it.”

Matthew danced around another strike, pulling Genis out of the way of a gout of flame. Raine, better at mana-sensing than he was, had moved before the attack had even started. “Barrier!” she called out, and the shimmering green shield that appeared around everyone did wonders for Matthew’s sanity. Icicles shot out of Genis’ kendama (and seriously, why a kendama? Matthew wanted to _know_ ) in rapid succession, each one causing more damage than the last as he gained confidence with each successful cast.

Colette skipped out of reach of the Ktugach, her chakrams spinning endlessly through the air. Lloyd was knocked into the air by a tail swipe, but Kratos rescued him before the boy was fried by a follow-up fireball. Raine hit the both of them with First Aid before they even landed.

That was also when Matthew decided he’d stayed on the sidelines for long enough, and he slipped undetected onto the main part of the battlefield. The Ktugach had frozen, channeling a large amount of mana and both other swordsman were capitalizing on the sudden advantage they had. Matthew figured they would be okay, as Kratos could pull Lloyd away in time if the Ktugach started moving again.

Colette had made her way over to Genis and Raine, slightly singed and exhausted. He made sure exhaustion was the only reason she was on her knees before focusing back on the battle. He wanted to surprise the giant kitten, not get himself roasted.

Over by the Ktugach, Lloyd was gathering mana. On its own, that wouldn’t have been a very alarming prospect, but he was holding Matthew’s swords. Swords full of Elemental Psynergy. Psynergy that really didn’t like mana, and had a tendency to explode violently whenever it came in contact with it. He opened his mouth to yell out a warning, but the Ktugach’s full and undivided attention on him blew that plan out of the water. And blasted him into the air, as the Ktugach finished channeling its spell and a large eruption appeared beneath his feet.

He managed to gather enough of the latent mana in the air to create a passable imitation of Chasm’s barrier—though with the natural fire element the mana had, it was more like Flash’s firewall—but the force of the eruption still slammed him into the ceiling. Hard. Dazed, he forgot to right himself as he fell, and hit the ground almost as hard as he’d hit the ceiling. Tail lashing, the Ktugach pounced-

And was intercepted by Lloyd.

The twin swordsman was glowing with mana by now, but Matthew could feel psynergy underneath it all; it felt a bit like the Sorcerer’s Ring. And Matthew wondered if Phaeton’s Blade and the Masamune had adapted and changed just as he had to fit this new world they’d found themselves in. The Masamune’s latent Mercury Psynergy sparked, nearly overwhelmed by the fire mana in the air, before igniting the baseless mana Lloyd had pulled from the air. “Rising Tempest!” the teen shouted, and two roaring dragons of water coated Lloyd’s blades as he jumped into the air, spinning in a violent circle and slicing deep into the Ktugach’s nose.

The Ktugach roared in pain and retreated, but though Lloyd had stayed where he landed, panting, the dragons did not. Weaving over and around each other in a pattern Matthew recognized as the Masamune’s signature unleash, Rising Dragon, the two serpents struck the Ktugach again and again and again.

“Icicle!” he heard Genis yell, and a large chunk of ice—more of a stalactite than an icicle, really—struck the base of the Ktugach’s neck. And finally, the large cat-like creature keeled over dead. “Oh thank Martel,” he heard the younger boy breathe out as Matthew struggled to stand up.

A bit groggy, he brought a hand to his head and stared at it uncomprehendingly when it came back bloody. “Ow,” he muttered.

“Matthew!” Colette latched onto his arm, nearly bringing the both of them down. “Are you alright?!” She gasped when she saw the blood on his hand, and he found himself on the floor again anyways when she abruptly let go. He’d been leaning on her for support and he hadn’t even noticed. “Professor! Professor!”

“Matthew?” Lloyd was the one in front of him now, and there was a hand on his back, keeping him from completely falling over. He thought maybe it was Kratos, but he wasn’t sure. “Can you hear me?” Matthew nodded in response to Lloyd’s question and instantly regretted it as pain suddenly ripped through his head.

He thought maybe he’d blacked out for a second, because when he next opened his eyes Raine was the one in front of him, her hands glowing a soothing white and the pain in his head already receding. “Better?” she asked, and Genis handed him a water bottle.

Gratefully, Matthew drank from it before tentatively nodding again. “Much,” he replied when he barely felt a twinge. The altar that the Ktugach had spawned from was steaming, Colette standing in front of it with Lloyd and Kratos flanking her. “What’d I miss?”

“Not much,” Genis replied. “The Ktugach dissolved into steam and the altar started reacting to it, so I think defeating it was the first trial.”

As he spoke, the altar rose from the ground, creating a hollow pillar that glowed with orange light. Matthew couldn’t help but stare, because that was mana-and-psynergy, and for the briefest second he’d noticed the outline of a large figure in the light before it was completely obscured by a sphere of mana. The altar returned to normal, but the mana sphere remained, and then a voice came from nowhere.

 **“You, the Chosen of Regeneration.”** Colette startled at being addressed so suddenly, and Matthew shivered as he stood up. He hated voices that appeared from nowhere; they reminded him too much of the Tuaparang. “ **Offer your prayers at the altar.”**

Colette let out a deep breath before climbing the three steps to the altar. Clasping her hands before her and bowing her head, she began to recite a prayer. “Oh Goddess Martel, great protector and nurturer of the earth, grant me thy strength!” Nurturer of the earth? So, was this Martel like Venus?

At the end of Colette’s prayer, the sphere of mana began to disperse, flowing upwards. And Matthew heard a tiny shriek. “ _Pact-maker_ ,” it cried, and then it was gone. Matthew slowly looked around, trying to locate where either of the two disembodied voices had come from and came up empty. Frowning, he glanced at the air where the mana sphere had been moments ago. Had that been one of them?

A bright light suddenly broke through the temple’s roof, and Matthew flinched away from it in horror. That wasn’t the light of Sol, the quiet hope of a breaking dawn, nor was it the glow of Luna, the gentle reassurance that everything would be alright. That light was _wrong_ , and it made something deep within his chest _ache_. Down from the shining light floated a small ball of condensed mana, and Matthew scuttled as far away from it as he could manage, ignoring the odd look Raine gave him. The others were too busy looking at the little ball of _wrong_ to notice what he was doing.

That…it was wrong. He hated it. It was wrong and gross and slimy and it _hurt_ , for some strange reason he couldn’t understand. He ducked behind a pillar and slid to the floor just as the little ball of wrong glowed brighter and expanded into the shape of a man with wings. Matthew stifled a gasp as he stared at something that had long been a legend on Weyard; one of the ancient Anemos. Of course, this was Sylvarant, so he probably wasn’t an Anemoi. The man was probably unaware of what that term even was. And yet, he too felt like mana-and-psynergy, and yet not like the Sorcerer’s Ring, because the ring did not give off that aching sense of wrongness. Only the man serenely floating in the air gave off that aura.

He felt like the darkness of the Great Eclipse. That cool, slimy feeling of something too far out of its true element, something that had lasted for too long and should be rotting beneath the ground. Matthew felt like he was going to be sick again.

And then the man opened his mouth. “Colette,” he said, a gentle smile on his face. “My dear daughter, you have done well.”

 _Lies!_ Matthew wanted to snarl, not to sure where that thought had come from but knowing it was true. He didn’t say it out loud though, too busy trying not to empty his stomach and desperately attempting to stay out of the man’s notice. “Thank you, Father,” Colette said politely, and Matthew almost lost his stomach anyways. That man was spouting lies and Colette _believed_ them and he was going to be sick.

He lurched sideways as bile rose, turning just enough that it hit the stone next to him instead of landing in his lap. Raine rushed over to him, but the Anemoi ignored them, having eyes for Colette only. Matthew wasn’t sure if he was grateful for that or not.

“The guardian of the seal has fallen, and the first seal has been released.” That gentle smile was still on the Anemoi’s face, but something in his expression twisted into unholy glee. “Efreet will surely awaken soon.” His wings were flapping slowly, and Matthew found himself mesmerized by the movements, the same way he’d been mesmerized by the cry of the Mountain Roc years ago. “In the name of Cruxis, I shall grant you the power of the angels.”

Angels. That’s what the ancient Anemoi had called those precious few Adepts with the skill to fly. He’d discovered that fact deep in the heart of the Anemos Sanctum. Had it been the Anemoi who had brought the bits and pieces of Weyard to Sylvarant? That…that would have been millennia ago, when the Anemoi had first raised their city from the ground. Around the time Alchemy had been sealed deep within Sol Sanctum. So very long ago.

“Thank you, my lord,” Colette was saying, and Matthew thought that was a cold way to address the man you thought was your father. Maybe she did know it was a lie. Maybe she was just clinging to it because she’d never known her real father.

Light spiraled down from the Anemoi, the angel, and Matthew nearly gasped again, because that wasn’t mana at all. That was psynergy, pure, clan-less psynergy. The kind of purity you’d have to hike to the Apollo Lens to find in Weyard. How had this Anemoi abomination gotten hold of purity like that?

The light reached Colette, coming to rest at the base of her throat before dissolving into her, suffusing her whole body in its gentle glow. Everyone was staring at her, so everyone saw when glowing appendages delicately unfolded from her back, and suddenly Colette had wings. They were not the solid feathered wings that the Anemoi had, but mana sculpted purple-tinted wings that held a hint of psynergy inside them. Like the Sorcerer’s Ring had, or the glow of the altar before the Anemoi had appeared.

Colette floated off the ground. Matthew couldn’t see her expression from where he was, still half-hidden behind a pillar, but he could see from the slant of her shoulders that she was tense. “The angel transformation will not be without pain. Yet, it is but for one night. Be strong and endure.”

“I humbly accept this trial,” Colette said, and it sounded rather rehearsed to Matthew.

“The next seal lies far to the east, across the sea. Offer your prayers at that altar.” Matthew perked up at that a bit, because the sea. The sea meant a boat, and a boat meant gentle rocking and violent storms and safety even in peril.

Colette nodded, gently landing, as she looked up at the Anemoi. “Yes, Lord Remiel.” Oh, Matthew finally had a name for the abomination. Remiel, Remiel…why did that sound familiar? He would have remembered ever meeting him; the aching sense of wrong was too hurtful for him to have forgotten it. Finally though, the Anemoi returned to being a ball of light, shooting through the air as he returned to wherever he had come from.

 **“I shall await you at the next seal, the Chosen of Regeneration,”** Remiel said as a creepy disembodied voice. **“My beloved daughter Colette.”** There was blessed silence for a moment, and with help from Raine Matthew managed to stand on his shaky legs.

Naturally, the first thing out of Lloyd’s mouth was, “Colette has wings!” like no one else had spotted them. Matthew didn’t blame him though; he kind of wanted to say the same thing.

Colette spun around proudly. “Uh-huh. And look, I can put them away, too.” And with a flicker of mana, her wings dissolved into sparkles, the hint of psynergy they held vanishing with them. Matthew was confused as to where that psynergy had gone, because it wasn’t hiding in Colette. And yet, when she brought them out again, to Genis’ delight, the psynergy was back.

As Genis and Colette played around with Colette’s new wings, the other four gathered around in a small circle. “Across the sea, huh?” Lloyd grinned. “That means we get to sail on a ship!”

Matthew grinned himself. “Yeah, I can’t wait. I like ships.” He’d lived on one for almost six months, when the Eclipse had been going on.

Raine frowned. “I wonder if any of the ships are sailing, with the way things are now.”

“We’ll find out when we reach the coast,” was Kratos’ blunt input. “We should head out immediately.”

Lloyd nodded and turned to the two other teens still having fun behind him. “Okay you two, that’s enough. We’re heading out.”

With matching grins, Lloyd’s best friends turned towards him and chorused, “Okay.” They all headed towards the warp panel, and Matthew sighed, lagging behind. His stomach still felt a little queasy from that Anemoi, and he was not looking forward to this. “Matthew, hurry up!” Genis called, and Matthew obligingly picked up the pace.

 _“Pact-maker,”_ came that quiet cry again, but he was already standing on the warp pad and he didn’t even have time to look around before he was whisked away.

Traversing backwards through the ruins was easier than heading inside, and Matthew was free to wonder about the tiny voice he, and he alone, had heard twice in peace.

They had barely set foot outside the ruins before Colette collapsed. “Colette!” Lloyd yelped, racing to her side.

“I-I’m fine,” Colette tried to insist, but nobody believed her.

“Your face is completely white!” Genis objected. Indeed, Colette looked paler than the moon at the moment, and Matthew stepped forward to place a hand on her forehead.

“You don’t have a fever,” he informed everyone at large. “Did the Ktugach hit you anywhere we didn’t see?”

“No!” she denied, furiously shaking her head and then looking like she regretted doing such a thing. Matthew knew that feeling intimately well.

Matthew hissed. “Your lips are turning blue! Are you _cold_?!” He was a bit shocked, since they were still in the middle of the desert, and it was late afternoon. Miserably, Colette nodded, tiny shivers noticeable now that he was looking for them.

“We should take her to a doctor, immediately.” The concern was heavy in Raine’s voice as she examined her student.

“Wait,” Kratos commanded, and everyone froze. “It’s best not to move her.”

“Best!?” Raine shrieked, instantly transforming into a kobold protecting her cub.

Kratos cut her off. “Remember the angel’s words.” No thank you, Matthew was doing his best to forget that the abomination even existed, not remember him. “The angel transformation process requires her to overcome a trial. Rather than taking her to a doctor, it would be best to let her rest here.”

Colette nodded. “That would be very nice. I’m sorry for causing so much trouble.”

“Stop apologizing so much,” Lloyd insisted. “It isn’t like you can help it. You were turned into an angel! Of course there’s gonna be problems.

“We should set up camp before it gets dark.”

* * *

Matthew stretched out next to the fire Genis had made, muscles much less sore now that he was resting them. His head still throbbed every now and again, but it would be fine come morning. His stomach was comfortably full, though the tofu had been _weird_. He’d had it once before, in Yamata, but that had been in some kind of soup and he hadn’t really noticed the texture. The texture of tofu was very different when it was used to make curry.

It had been alright though. Far better than the stuff Amiti had sworn was food whenever it was his turn to cook.

He watched Lloyd flit about the campsite, his short attention span and boundless energy making itself known. Colette sat on the other side of the fire, wrapped up in a blanket and curled up on the sand, her serving of tofu curry practically untouched. Matthew frowned at that. She needed to eat something, or her strength would give out, but he knew eating was the last thing she felt like doing right now. Being sick sucked.

With a sigh, Matthew hopped to his feet, dragging his sword along with him over to a relatively flat patch of sand. He might as well run through his drills; there wasn’t anything else to do but think. Slowly he lifted the Sol Blade so it was level with his eyes, parallel to the ground. It was a challenge to keep it perfectly steady, as it really was quite heavy, but he’d been doing it for two years. It was as natural as breathing now, to slide into the slightly wider stance required to keep balance.

And, slowly, he began to go through the steps and stances his father had drilled into him since he was six years old. Forward, slide, pivot, _keep your sword up Matthew,_ guard, back, sidestep, _stay aware of your surroundings_ , twist, turn, back again, slide, pivot, _never stop moving you’ll invite attacks that way,_ back, forward, side, pivot, slide-

A misstep sent him tumbling down to the sand, and he groaned softly. He hadn’t made a mistake like that in years, and it annoyed him that he had now. “Damn it,” he whispered, staring up at the unfamiliar constellations like they would have the answers he needed to questions he hadn’t even asked yet. “Damn it, damn it, damn it all.” Damn it, he didn’t want to think. But he lay where he fell and did so anyways.

He was lost, and confused, and had no one familiar behind him. Even the stars had forsaken him, and this was worse than that never-ending pool of darkness, because there had been a way out of that. A slim chance at hope, and they’d fought for it and they’d won, but now he was alone. Lost in a world he didn’t understand. He threw one arm over his eyes, blocking out the sight of the Sylvarant sky, and for a moment he could pretend he was still at home. “Wherever you are Dad, I hope you’re alright.”

“Matthew,” Kratos said a moment later, and the younger swordsman looked up. “If you’re going to sleep, it would be wise to do so closer to the fire. You’ll catch a cold otherwise.”

Matthew hummed in agreement, clambering to his feet. “I think I’ll go for a walk,” he said quietly. He tried to keep his voice steady, but to his horror it cracked a bit. He expected the mercenary to protest, but the man just nodded in acceptance.

Perhaps he could see Matthew just needed to be left alone for an hour or two. “Be careful,” he warned, and Matthew walked further into the ruins, retracing the path they’d only just traveled.

He could feel a tiny itch in the back of his mind, an itch that normally appeared when he was near a Djinn, or a Summons Tablet. An itch that indicated a large amount of Elemental Psynergy. It was coming from the depths of the ruins, where he had heard the tiny voice before. But he really, really doubted it was a Djinn. Djinn never contained themselves when they spotted an Adept, especially if they were alone by themselves. A Djinn would have latched onto Matthew in an instant.

So, a Summons was somewhere in the ruins. He just had to find it, and get back to the camp before the sun rose; easy enough. The monsters weren’t all that dangerous unless in large numbers, and all the puzzles had been solved earlier. Moving through the ruins would be easy. And would give him something to do besides fail at sleeping.

Soon enough, he found himself back at the altar where Remiel had appeared. He grimaced just thinking about the Anemoi. He figured he would start with this room, as here had been when he’d heard the voice calling out to him. Approaching the altar, he noticed writing he hadn’t seen, engraved on a pedestal he hadn’t noticed.

It was written in the style of the ancient Mars Clan.

“’The Throne of Fire’,” he said softly, running his fingers lightly over the engraving. It felt like psynergy. Not mana, not mana-and-psynergy. Just Mars Psynergy. He sent a pulse of his own psynergy into the pedestal.

Fire gathered on the altar in response, gathering in the form he’d seen depicted on the mural near the entrance. “ **I am Efreet, Lord of Hellfire,** ” the great mass of mana-and-psynergy before him intoned. “ **Heir of the Ancients, what is it you seek?** ”

Matthew had no idea what Efreet meant, and opened his mouth to tell him so. But what came out was most definitely not what he meant to say. He had no idea where these words were coming from; it was almost like he was reading a translation from the Glyph Book. He never quite understood how he knew the things he did, but he knew them anyways. “I am Matthew. I seek a pact with the Spirit Efreet,” he answered.

Efreet nodded, like he had expected no other answer. “ **But I am one who is bound to Mithos,** ” he explained. “ **I cannot hold two pacts at once.** ”

Matthew continued on instinct. “Then I would ask that you annul your former pact, to form a new one with me.”

The Great Spirit considered this. “ **Very well. Prove your strength in battle, that I might see your worth for my pact!** ” With that, Efreet took to the air, and Matthew wondered at the wisdom of challenging what was effectively a Summon _by himself_ , when he had previously only done such a thing with heavy backup. “ **Eruption!** ” And the battle began.

Matthew dove to the side, rolling to soften the impact and drawing the Sol Blade in one smooth motion. Well. He could end up horribly disfigured; on the flip side, this would probably be a really, _really_ fun battle. He couldn’t help himself. He grinned. Efreet was slinging great balls of fire around like they were going out of style, and Matthew bounced between them, feeling lighter than air as adrenaline shot through his system. It almost felt like sparring with Tyrell again, if Tyrell could somehow turn into a giant five times his size.

“ **Explosion!** ” came Efreet’s booming voice, and fire rained down from above. Instead of dodging it, Matthew leapt up to meet it, hitting it towards Efreet with his sword. Megiddo was so much easier to pull off when others provided a flaming sphere he could hit.

“Megiddo!” he crowed, just because he could. Already he felt leagues better than he had even ten minutes ago.

Efreet flew towards him, fists blazing, and began a series of quick strikes. They were blindingly fast and the flames that coated him made them dangerous. But Sveta was faster, and Matthew and Fire were old friends. Practically family, from his mother’s side. He laughed, ducking and weaving under Efreet’s fists and blocking a swipe of his tail with his sword. Both he and Efreet were pulling at them mana in the air, charging up the largest attack they had.

Efreet finished first. “ **Flames of Destruction!** ” he snarled, the thrill of the battle shining in his eyes. A large amount of flames appeared around Matthew, and he barely figured out what was going to happen before it did. The flames slammed into him one after another, going too fast to burn but still causing a significant amount of damage. It hurt. The upside, though, was that Matthew was knocked high above Efreet, and he’d finished gathering mana as well.

It was still fire mana. But the spell itself was definitely based on Venus.

“Odyssey!” Matthew cried, and four glowing blades pierced Efreet from below, pinning him in place. At the same time, as Matthew descended towards the Spirit, a sword nearly twice Efreet’s length came falling from the sky and struck Efreet just as the Sol Blade did.

Matthew may have blacked out again, but it was only for an instant, and when he dragged himself to his feet Efreet was still down. “I win,” he rasped out, sheathing his sword.

“ **Splendid,** ” Efreet chuckled. “ **Lord Maxwell was correct; you are indeed worthy of bearing my pact.** ” Maxwell? Who was Maxwell? “ **But know this, pact-maker; once before, a vow was broken.** ” Efreet hovered before him, large and imposing. “ **Do not do what he once did, for I will be far less forgiving this time.** ”

Vows were broken all the time, but somehow Matthew knew this particular vow had meant more to Efreet than any other that had come before it. And whoever Mithos had been, he had broken it, and this spirit who had freely given it to him. “ **Now, Son of Earth and Fire, Heir to the Ancient Clan. By the laws of nature, you and I are brothers-in-arms, joined together in battle from your first breath. And now, I take my rightful place at your side! I will be the flames that scorch your enemies, and the power that fuels you! I will be the pillar of flame that lights your path! So the Lord of Fire pledges to you, Ancient. What do you vow in return?** ”

Matthew stared up at Efreet. This might not have been what he’d been expecting when he’d come in here, but there was something Efreet knew and wouldn’t tell him. Something to do with whatever had brought him to Sylvarant. And maybe…maybe the Spirit was part of the reason.

He stepped forward. “You cannot save everyone. Inevitably, someone’s loved one may never return home to them. But that doesn’t mean I cannot try. So, Efreet, Lord of Fire. I vow to save all I can, even those who call me their enemy, because everyone has someone waiting for them.”

“ **I hear and accept,** ” Efreet boomed, and Matthew echoed him. Efreet began to channel mana again, but this was his own mana-and-psynergy, not the surrounding mana he’d used for his attacks. It coalesced in front of him, compacting and forming a ring. It dropped into Matthew’s hand, and he examined it critically. It felt like Efreet did. “ **Summon me when you need me, Lord Matthew, and I shall answer.** ”

With that, Efreet disappeared.

After studying the ring a bit longer, Matthew tugged off his left glove with his teeth and slipped Efreet’s ring over his index finger. It was alright, he supposed. Garnets were never really his favorite stone, but no other would suit the Lord of Fire. He’d just have to deal with it. He pulled his glove back on and headed back to camp, completely forgetting the fact that he was covered in burns and bruises.

Kratos’ disapproving glare swiftly reminded him.

* * *

Heading east across the desert was torture, especially since Matthew had hardly gotten any sleep the night before. He’d kept twisting Efreet’s ring, over and over again, wondering if he should tell anyone about the Spirit he now commanded. He hadn’t, in the end. If Spirits could only form one pact at a time, it was likely the ability was uncommon here. He’d keep it quiet, for now.

“Hot,” Lloyd moaned. Matthew stayed resolutely silent, determined to not get in a repeat of yesterday’s conversation. “It’s so hot out here.”

“Shut up,” Matthew said wearily, already breaking his promise to himself. “Unless you have some magic way to cool down the sun, you’re just going to have to deal with it.”

“But it’s so hot,” he whined. “How far is it to the edge of the desert?”

“Too far to deal with you complaining all the way there,” Matthew instantly shot back.

“How long do you think this will last?” he heard Genis mutter.

“Based on what happened yesterday, it’s likely to go on until we exit the desert,” Raine answered, and Matthew sighed. That’s what he thought to.

He dropped back to walk by the silent mercenary, hoping for a bit of peace. He should’ve known better; Kratos had let him off far too easily last night when he’d returned to the campsite. “What did you battle last night?” he asked softly, glancing sideways at Matthew. Matthew stayed silent, not opening his mouth. He was a terrible liar, and the fact that Kratos had patched him up last night without question or batting an eye made him even less inclined to try.

“Big monster,” Matthew compromised. “Very big monster that liked to throw fireballs.”

Matthew squirmed under Kratos’ stare. He scowled uneasily at the mercenary, trying to place where he’d seen the man’s expression before. Kratos raised an eyebrow, and Matthew promptly cracked like an egg. “It was Efreet, okay?” he hissed. “I went back to the altar because I heard him calling me, and I fought him, and I _won_.”

 _‘Dad, that’s who he reminds me of right now,_ ’ Matthew realized. ‘ _That’s the face Dad wears whenever I do something I’m not supposed to.’_

“You _won_?!” Kratos seemed more surprised by the fact that Matthew had won than the fact that he’d heard and battled a Summon. “You fought against a Great Spirit alone and _won_?”

Matthew nodded, a bit of pride in the gesture. “Yeah.”

“So you have a pact with him now,” Kratos surmised, and Matthew nodded again. “You should be careful then; Summoning is considered a lost art in Sylvarant. Some might think they can take it from you by force.”

“I’d like to see them try,” Matthew said nonchalantly. Then, “How much do you know about Summoning? I didn’t even know I _could_ Summon until Efreet appeared.”

“How did you make a pact without knowing anything about Summoning?” Kratos countered.

Matthew shrugged and hazarded a guess. “Instinct? I don’t really know; I just opened my mouth and words came out.” Kratos looked at him in disbelief, but Matthew didn’t really have a better answer. “It’s true,” he defended himself. “It felt like I was reading a script I’d never studied before.”

Kratos made a cursory scan of the area before answering. “I do not know much either. Only one who has made a pact with a Spirit may summon it, and Spirits may hold only one pact at a time. As long as the vow the pact was made on is upheld, Spirits may not annul their previous pacts. If the vow is broken, so is the pact, and the Summoner can no longer call upon the Spirit.”

“Thank you,” Matthew said. “That was more than I knew.” There was quiet for a few moments, as Lloyd chased around a shrieking Genis and a recovered Colette, all three of them laughing as Raine looked on in fond amusement. “So, what’s across the sea?”

“The city of Palmacosta,” Kratos answered, side-eying him. “It is the largest city in Sylvarant. Hopefully we will find clues as to where the next seal is there.”

Right, for that Big Important Journey thing they were on.

…Maybe Palmacosta would have a library.

With a history section.

Two days of desert trudging later, the group finally found themselves at the mountain trail that would lead them towards their destination. Matthew, for one, was ecstatic to get off the sand. Everyone else seemed happy to leave the heat behind.

Matthew bounded forward, reveling in the solid stone beneath his feet. So happy it was almost annoying, he spun on his heel so he was walking backwards.

“Glad to be out of the desert?” Raine asked, amused.

“Most definitely,” Matthew affirmed, bouncing a bit and deftly avoiding the mine shaft he could feel through the earth. “Careful you don’t fall in.”

Genis cocked his head to the side. “Fall in what?”

“Stop!” A loud voice rang out before he could answer, and Matthew turned towards its source in an instant, placing Colette behind him on instinct. Standing atop a cliff was a young woman wearing Nihan-style clothing, her hair in a ponytail. She leapt off the cliff and landed lightly in front of them, and Matthew couldn’t help freezing. This woman had psynergy. It was frail and weak, barely more than a spark, but it was there. He couldn’t believe it.

“Who are you?” Lloyd challenged, hands on his swords.

The woman ignored him, her eyes sweeping over all of them. She looked very unsure of herself for a moment. “Is the Chosen of Mana among you?”

Colette perked up. “Oh, that’s me!” she chirped, one hand flying into the air.

The woman’s gaze locked onto her, and Matthew got a very bad feeling. “Prepare to die!” she snarled, and Matthew pushed Colette farther back as the woman charged at her. Stepping up to meet her, he realized two things; one, he’d just stepped onto the covering of the mine shaft. Two, Colette had fallen onto the lever that opened the shaft just as the woman reached him.

‘ _Well, crap,’_ he thought as the ground disappeared beneath his feet. In front of him, the woman let out a shriek of surprise as she experienced the same thing, and the both of them fell. Matthew hit the ground first, and through some horrible stroke of luck the woman landed on top of him, knocking all the air out of his lungs. “Ow,” he moaned.

The woman echoed him, and Matthew stared up at the tiny square of light that they’d fallen from. “Matthew!” came an echo of Colette’s voice. “Oh, I’m so sorry! Are you alright?!”

“Somehow!” he called back, shoving the woman off of him and sitting up.

“Hang on! We’ll go get a rope or something!” That was either Lloyd or Genis; he couldn’t tell the difference this far away.

He glanced back over at the woman, who was holding her side and struggling to stand. “No, that’ll take too long! There’s gotta be more than one entrance to this mine; I’ll find one! You guys keep going!” This set off an argument he couldn’t really hear. “I’ll see you all later!” he called, standing up himself.

The woman looked at him distrustfully as he rubbed the back of his neck. “Damn, why am I always falling down holes?” he mumbled mostly to himself. “I even saw this one; why the hell did I still fall in?”

The woman let out a snort. He could practically hear the _idiot_ hidden in it.

“You don’t get to talk,” he said mulishly, pulling his jacket out of his bag. It was cold down here in the mine. “You fell in too.”

“But I didn’t know it was here,” she countered, pulling out a slip of paper brimming with mana.

He sighed, shaking his head at the hostile move. “Put that away,” he said sharply, sticking his hands in his pockets. “We’re stuck down here together; I suggest a temporary truce until we get out.”

Warily she did as he asked, but as she did smoke appeared next to her shoulder, and a tiny fox with multiple tails appeared from within. “Sheena!” it called out, then noticed him and started to bristle.

“You’re a Summoner!?” he yelped, infinitely more interested in her now.

“Yes,” she sniffed, one hand scratching the fox Spirit under his chin. The little fox started purring, ears flat against his skull. “Sheena Fujibayashi,” she declared.

“Matthew,” he answered her. The tiny little fox stared at him before leaping from Sheena’s shoulder to his own.

“Corrine, what are you doing?” Sheena yelped, reaching for her Spirit.

Matthew held very, very still. Tiny though he might be, he was still a Summon, and size meant nothing when it came to power. Besides, he was uncomfortably close to his ear. “Sheena,” the little fox stated, avoiding her hands by moving to Matthew’s other shoulder. “He’s an Ancient.”

Matthew frowned. “How do you know that? What does that even mean?” Efreet had called him that, which was why he was only marginally surprised to hear it from yet another Spirit, but he didn’t know what it meant. He shook his head and lifted the fox Spirit off his shoulder, handing him back to his Summoner. “Never mind. So, Sheena, a truce?”

Sheena eyed his outstretched hand like it was going to bite him, but she nodded and shook his hand anyways. “Only until we get out of here,” she said. “And I will still kill the Chosen.”

“And I will stop you from doing so,” he informed her. He inclined his head towards the depths of the mine. “Shall we get started?”

“Lead the way,” she said, gesturing him ahead. He did so without reluctance, knowing he would sense her coming if she decided to attack him. “Why are you traveling with the Chosen?” she asked after a while, the two of them standing at a crossroads. Matthew wanted to go right; Matthew could feel the earth above his head growing thinner. Sheena argued for left just to be contrary. Corrine had finally agreed to scout ahead just to get them to stop, and they were waiting for him to return.

Matthew glanced at her. She seemed genuinely curious, and Matthew didn’t see the harm in telling her. “It just sort of happened,” he shrugged, deciding to skip the needlessly complicated backstory. “I got separated from my father, and while I was looking for him I ran into them. Colette offered to let me travel with them until I could find him.”

“Colette?”

“The Chosen.” Matthew rolled his eyes. “You mean you’re trying to kill her and you don’t even know that much about her? Some assassin you are.”

“Shut up!” Sheena snapped defensively, and Matthew realized he’d touched a nerve. “I know she’s the Chosen who will regenerate this world, and for that I must end her life. That’s all I need to know.”

“… _This_ world?” Matthew asked curiously. It was an odd choice of word; most would say ‘the’ world, not ‘this’ world. Did she know there was more than Sylvarant?

Sheena glared at him and stayed silent. Luckily, Corrine reappeared before they could start snapping at one another again. “Sheena! Ancient!” Corrine, for some reason, refused to call Matthew by his name. He hopped up onto Sheena’s shoulder, purring. “The Ancient was right, Sheena,” he said. “We need to go right. There’s a boarded up opening down that way, and I could smell the fresh air coming through it.”

“Fine,” Sheena muttered. “Let’s go then.”

She still made Matthew go first.

Paranoia at its finest.


	4. Everything's gone off track, and I'm somehow supposed to not fall to pieces

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Matthew realizes that he most definitely did befriend an assassin, entirely by accident. That seems to be the normal for him.
> 
> He also, entirely by accident, addresses a hurt he wasn't even aware existed, and learns that Sylvarant's writing system is not the same as Weyard's, which is highly inconvenient.

“Lucky!” Matthew crowed when he and Sheena knocked down the barrier to reveal Lloyd and the others.

“Matthew! Thank goodness you’re okay!” Colette beamed, bouncing up to him and grabbing his hands.

“I’ve fallen down a lot of holes, Colette,” Matthew admitted. “That one wasn’t even very deep by my standards.” Sheena snorted again. “Shut up Sheena,” he shot back reflexively. He then picked up Colette and threw himself forward just as Sheena’s paper seals struck where she’d been standing.

Fire instantly scorched the ground and caught one of Matthew’s legs; thanks to Efreet’s blessing, he barely felt a thing. “Already?” he complained. “C’mon Sheena, give a guy a warning when you’re gonna break a truce.”

“Enough of you,” Sheena snarled, pulling out another slip of paper as Kratos and Lloyd drew their swords. Matthew set Colette down and drew his own blade, eying the seal in her hand warily. There was something different about this one. “I call upon thee, Guardian,” Sheena intoned. “Wind!” The seal vanished in a swirl of wind, twisting and forming the shape of a large bird with the torso of a man and long skinny arms. Floating behind it was a large wheel with strange symbols in between each spoke. On the back hung the mask of an oni; at least, Matthew hoped it was just a mask, and not an actual demon head. Because that would be gross.

“Creepy,” Lloyd decided. Matthew agreed with him.

The Guardian shot towards Matthew and he jumped backwards, only realizing his mistake when Sheena threw multiple Pyre Seals and blocked him from the rest of the battle with a wall of flame. Theoretically, with Efreet’s blessing, he could walk through it with no trouble; the problem was the giant bird thing in his way. “Keep him away from the battle!” Sheena called, tossing yet more Pyre Seals, this time knocking Kratos aside. “Let’s go Corrine!”

Matthew yelped and dodged out of the way of the Guardian’s long arms as it swiped at him. Its arms were long enough that even with his sword, its range was longer than his. “Damn it,” he hissed, twisting out of the way and sheathing his sword. If he couldn’t reach it with the Sol Blade, he’d just have to go long distance. Back flipping away from another strike, he pulled in mana. Here at the base of the mountain, it was the familiar, comforting feel of the earth, and Matthew reveled in it.

The being in front of him wasn’t Efreet; he didn’t bother charging it all the way, instead cutting off at the halfway mark at launching only a single glowing sword. “Ragnarök,” he snarled, hurling it at the beast. He was certain it was only the surprise of a giant sword suddenly materializing that made the Guardian not dodge.

To his surprise, the Guardian disintegrated into scraps of paper. It made him wonder if setting it on fire would’ve killed it faster. “Corrine!” Sheena yelled, and through the sheet of flame Matthew managed to see the fox Spirit go down. The assassin scooped him into her arms and vanished in a cloud of smoke. “Next time I’ll kill you all!”

“Hold it!” Lloyd shouted, but Sheena was already gone. “Why are people always trying to kill us?” he moaned.

Now that Sheena was no longer feeding them mana, the Pyre Seals walling Matthew off fizzled out, leaving only ashes behind. “Well, that was certainly dramatic,” Matthew felt the need to say. He looked down at his leg and clicked his tongue at the damage. “Damn, this was my favorite pair of pants,” he muttered, bending down to tear off the burned beyond repair fabric. Lucky for him his boot hadn’t caught fire, but he still ended up with a left pant leg that ended at the knee.

“How is it your leg has not the slightest burn on it?” Raine asked, and Matthew froze.

“Er,” he began, but he had no idea how to finish.

“That flame was powerful enough to kill,” Raine continued, “yet you are not even scorched.”

“Um,” he tried again, eyes automatically darting around for an escape route.

Raine raised her eyebrow, and Matthew promptly cracked like an egg. “I made a pact with Efreet,” he blurted out. “Back at the Seal of Fire.” He could see Kratos sigh from the corner of his eye. “Resistance to fire is something the ring he gave me does, which is really handy.”

“I hope the fate of the world never depends on you keeping a secret,” Kratos deadpanned.

“Shut up,” Matthew muttered. It wasn’t his fault Raine had a stare like his mother. “Let’s just go, okay?”

“You made a pact with Efreet?!” Raine shouted.

“Yes?” Matthew said cautiously, giving up on not explaining.

“Why didn’t you say anything?!” she demanded.

Matthew shrunk into himself, feeling more and more like he was facing off with his mother as she yelled at him for cliff-diving again. “I didn’t think it was that important,” he defended himself.

“Not important?!” Raine sounded outraged. “Of course it’s important! Summoning is a lost art in Sylvarant!” Once again a fire appeared in her eyes that made Matthew cringe. “To meet not one, but two Summoners; it’s practically impossible!”

“Not really,” Matthew pointed out. “Since you have, and all.” Matthew glanced over at Kratos, pleading for help as Raine grabbed his shoulders.

“I simply must know everything!” she insisted.

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to disappoint you,” Matthew said quietly, shaking her off. “I didn’t even know I could summon until Efreet called me to make a pact with him. I don’t even know much about Spirits; it was luck, really, that I even made that pact.”

Kratos finally decided that Matthew had suffered enough, and cut in. “We should be off. With luck we will reach Izoold before dusk.”

“But,” Raine tried to argue, but Matthew had taken the distraction Kratos had given him and bounded out of her reach, practically hiding between Lloyd and Genis.

“Why was that assassin with you anyways?” Genis asked as they left the mountains. “Couldn’t you get away from her?”

“I probably could have,” Matthew admitted, looking down at him. “But there were monsters down there, I couldn’t leave her. Besides,” _I vow to save all I can, even those who call me their enemy, because everyone has someone waiting for them._ “Helping others is just what I do. My best friend always yells at me for that.” Tyrell had been very upset when Matthew had derailed a simple supply run to deliver a letter for a little girl. And then gone back to give her the reply.

Matthew probably would have kept going back and forth between the two of them if Tyrell hadn’t dragged him away by his scarf.

Rief had joked that if the world didn’t need looking after Matthew would have made a great deliveryman.

Matthew was seriously considering it anyways. It would be a good hobby, and it wasn’t like the world constantly needed saving. He liked helping people. It wasn’t much, but it helped him feel like he was making up for his failures, little by little.

Colette clapped her hands together. “Well, I’m glad you were both okay. Did you get her name?”

“Sheena,” Matthew said, surprised. “Sheena Fujibayashi. Why?”

Colette looked at him with disapproval. “Well if I don’t know her name, how are we supposed to be friends?”

Matthew wasn’t the only one who tripped over thin air at that remark. “What do you mean ‘friends’?” Lloyd sputtered. “She’s trying to kill you!” In the privacy of the back of his mind, Matthew admitted that it was very possible Sheena _would_ end up a friend, simply because Colette was a happy ray of sunshine that was impossible to hate. And Sheena was a good fighter, as Matthew had seen firsthand, but she didn’t seem to be a killer.

Colette nodded. “I know. Once we become friends I’ll have to ask why she was doing that.”

“Good luck with that,” Matthew said, rubbing his side and wincing. “She punched me in the kidneys when I tried asking.”

“You seriously think we’re all gonna become friends with her? How do you plan on doing that?!”

“Hmm,” Colette wondered, then spun around so she was speaking to all three boys. “I don’t know. What would you suggest?”

“How am I supposed to know?” Lloyd asked.

Genis shrugged. “I don’t have any ideas either.”

“Aww.” Colette kicked at a pebble and watched as it skittered down the path. “What about you, Matthew?”

Matthew was actually taking this question seriously. He wouldn’t mind bringing Sheena along with them; he had so many questions to ask her, and since she was a Summoner too she might actually know the answers to them. But how did you make an enemy your friend? Come to think of it, how did you make friends in general? Matthew had been born with Karis and Tyrell; Rief, Amiti, Sveta, Eoleo and Himi had all been met under life or death circumstances. They’d had no choice but to get along or die trying.

Lloyd and the others, if they could be counted as friends, were met in much the same way.

“I don’t know how to make friends,” Matthew realized.

“What?” Lloyd and Genis chorused.

“Eh? But, we’re all friends, right?” Colette asked, grabbing his shirt sleeve.

Matthew looked down at her. “Well, I’d like to think so. But, I meant, I don’t know how you make friends normally. Cause, I was just going over it in my head, and I realized every friend I’ve ever made was because I was dropped into a battle for my life with only them for back-up. You can’t trust someone with your life and not end up friends. But that’s not how you normally make friends. I have no idea how to purposefully make friends.”

Genis snorted. “So, going by your standards, you and Sheena are _already_ friends.”

“Yeah,” Lloyd grinned. “After all, you _were_ literally dropped into a life or death situation with her.”

“Huh. Guess so.” Matthew grinned as well. “Though, since she tried to flambé me, I doubt Sheena feels the same way.”

“Speaking of that woman,” Raine cut in suddenly, causing Matthew to jump a foot into the air at the unexpected voice. “Did you find anything odd about the clothing she was wearing?”

Matthew frowned. “They weren’t from around here?” he offered. Now that he was thinking about it, he realized that her clothes couldn’t actually be from Nihan, no matter how similar the style was.

“Indeed,” Kratos said. “They’re very uncommon.”

Matthew fell back to talk to Colette as the other four began to dissect Sheena’s clothing choice. “You really think we can get Sheena to stop trying to kill you?” Matthew asked.

Colette beamed up at him. “Yes! Why are you asking?”

Matthew shrugged. “I just…wanted to ask her some things about summoning. We spent most of the time in the mine arguing with each other about which way to go and I…didn’t get to ask her everything I wanted to.”

“Do you really not know anything about summoning?”

Matthew nodded. “Like I said earlier, I didn’t even know I could summon until I met Efreet. It…would be nice to know some things. I’m hoping Palmacosta has a library I can disappear into for a few hours. Maybe I can find something there.”

As well as some things about the Journey of Regeneration and the Chosen and such. Matthew _hated_ not knowing things; not knowing things was how he’d ended up almost killing everyone important to him.

“It’s the biggest city on Sylvarant,” Colette said. “I’m sure there’s a library somewhere in it. I don’t know if it will have any information on Summoners though; not even the Professor knows much about summoning, and she’s really smart and knows lots of things!”

“At this point, Colette,” Matthew said quietly, “anything would be better than nothing.”

Kratos’ prediction ran true as they reached a small port town just as the sun began to sink behind the mountains. “So this is Izoold?” Lloyd asked, looking around in curiosity.

Matthew frowned, his eyes skipping over the scattered buildings, worn by wear and time. He glanced over at the port—only two docks and just as many ships—and his frown deepened. “Awfully small for a port town,” he mused.

“Izoold make most of its income from the fish they catch,” Kratos explained. “Travel between the continents is rare enough that they do not bother to cater to it.”

“Oh.” He supposed that made sense.

“Let us stay at the inn for the night; we can see about finding a boat in the morning.”

* * *

Matthew woke for no particular reason in the very early morning. Frowning up at the ceiling, he strained his senses to locate the disturbance that had caused his awareness and heard footsteps outside the window. Sitting up, he saw Kratos heading for the docks. Frown deepening, Matthew quietly slid out of bed and followed him, careful not to wake Raine and Colette, who were notoriously light sleepers.

Slipping outside the inn, he glanced up at the unfamiliar constellations once again before heading after the mercenary. He spotted the man sitting on the dock, one leg dangling over the ocean. “Is it too much to ask for peace for one night?” Kratos asked without turning around, and Matthew was officially confused.

“Huh?”

Kratos turned marginally and seemed to realize something. “Forgive me, I thought you were Lloyd.”

Matthew, who hadn’t bothered to put his boots on, plopped down on the dock beside Kratos and let his legs dip into the water. “Oh? You two talk a lot?”

“More than I wish, sometimes,” Kratos admitted. “Though it can, very rarely, be insightful.”

Matthew nodded. “Straight-forward people like Lloyd are very often like that; sometimes you wonder why they even bother to open their mouths, and other times you wonder where they found their wisdom.” Matthew leaned back on his elbows to observe the fading stars, and after a moment’s hesitation Kratos joined him. “Stars are pretty tonight.”

“Yes,” Kratos said. “But I, for one, am looking forward to the sunrise.”

Matthew grinned. “Sunrises are beautiful over the ocean waves,” he agreed. “Though I prefer the sunsets, myself. Is that why you’re out here so early?” Kratos merely nodded, and Matthew watched the stars blink out of existence one by one as the sun neared the horizon. Sitting up, he was just in time to see Sol emerge from the ocean, its brilliant rays reflecting off the water with dazzling effects. “Yeah,” Matthew decided as he rubbed away the spots that had formed in his eyes. “I definitely prefer sunsets.”

Kratos stood. “Let’s go back to the inn. The others must be awake by now.”

Matthew bounced to his feet. “Maybe Raine and Colette are, but Lloyd and Genis sleep like stones.”

Kratos looked at him strangely—for what Matthew had no idea. He hadn’t said anything odd and the bouncing was pretty much how he moved—before leading the way. “Speaking of Lloyd,” Matthew began, because they had been speaking of him earlier and this was something Matthew had been meaning to bring up for a while. “His swordsmanship sucks.”

Kratos gave him a look that clearly said ‘ _And you are pointing out the obvious because_?’

“You should give him a few pointers,” Matthew said, rolling his eyes as he did so. “I know you’ve been thinking about it; you get this weird frown on your face after every battle. Of course I’ve noticed,” Matthew cut off Kratos’ reply. “People-reading is a survival skill and since I’m quite fond of surviving I’ve gotten very good at it.”

“Why don’t you teach him then?” Kratos asked.

Matthew already had an answer for that question. “I don’t have the patience,” he said. “Or the skill,” he admitted reluctantly. “I can see the holes in his guard, I can pick apart his stances, I could knock him over in three seconds without breaking a sweat; but I wouldn’t even know where to start fixing all of that. Maybe if he wasn’t a dual-wielder I could figure it out but…” Matthew shrugged. “I’ve never even met someone who fights with two weapons, unless you count idiot bandits who don’t know how to fight anyways.

“You have patience; quite a bit of it, actually, which is good, and you’re incredibly skilled.” He could admit that. He just didn’t like to. The mercenary was almost inhumanly good, and that was him holding back a significant amount of his strength. As he was now Matthew might be able to match him; if he ever stopped holding back? The word ‘annihilated’ sprung to mind. “You’re also fonder of him than I am.”

“What makes you believe I am fond of him?”

Matthew waved away Kratos’—was that suspicion? No wait, it was annoyance. “Just a feeling, really. I actually thought you two were related when I first met you.” There; that was definitely a flinch. He wouldn’t have seen it if he hadn’t been looking for it, but it had definitely been there. “I realized you weren’t when I noticed he was a lot closer to everyone else than you were. So, I was thinking that he must remind you of someone you’re close to?”

Kratos looked like he was having an intense internal debate before he finally nodded. “Yes. He reminds me, very much, of my wife,” he said haltingly.

“Married, huh.” Matthew placed his hands behind his head, lacing his fingers together. “You have a kid? Because, I have to tell you, you have one of the sternest Dad expressions I have ever seen, and my uncle used to joke that my Dad’s face was made of granite.”

Somewhere along the way, their walk back to the inn had turned into a stroll through the port town, and Matthew watched as Kratos tipped his head back to stare at the brightening sky. He regretted his question the moment it was out of his mouth as Kratos’ expression twisted into one of pain for the briefest moments. “Yes,” he repeated. “I had a son.”

 _I had_.

Isaac had once told him, one night after the Eclipse had ended and he and Garet had gotten stupidly drunk, that the lifespan the Golden Sun had bestowed upon him was a curse. He’d said that if it hadn’t been for his beard the two of them could pass as twins. Another twenty or so years, he predicted, and Matthew could pass as his father. A few more decades after that, and if Matthew hadn’t been killed yet he would probably die of old age. Meanwhile, Isaac would still look like a young man just entering the prime of his life, never mind the fact that he had outlived his son.

Such a thing was his greatest fear, he’d said. It was any parent’s greatest fear, to outlive their children. To bury their children while they themselves still lived; such an occurrence was unnatural, an abomination of nature.

 _I had_.

They were the worst words Matthew had ever heard.

“Sorry,” he muttered, dropping his gaze to the dirt.

“You did not know.”

“And I shouldn’t have asked.”

It was quiet until they entered the one roomed inn, where they found Raine and Colette up and eating while Lloyd slept and Genis was only just stirring. Normally Matthew would have felt the need to say ‘I told you,’ but he was trying to not make things worse, as opening his mouth would undoubtedly do. So he sat at the table quietly and halfheartedly picked at the food in front of him.

He didn’t even recognize it; some kind of thick soup thing that wasn’t porridge. He just slowly placed it in his mouth, not even tasting it, as Kratos dumped Lloyd onto the floor to wake him up and Genis stumbled blearily over to the table. Colette didn’t seem to have much of an appetite either, pushing the goop around with her spoon. Maybe it tasted bad and Matthew just couldn’t tell.

Muffled cursing and muttered death threats appeared throughout breakfast, and without delay nor mindless chatter they were off back to the docks to find passage to Palmacosta. But of course, the boats weren’t running. They weren’t even going out to fish because of the increase of Desian activity, and Matthew had never missed Eoleo more. The pirate wouldn’t have shrunk away from trouble; hell, he’d be the one _causing_ it, and causing Amiti’s blood pressure to rise to dangerous levels.

Matthew almost laughed at the image he’d conjured of his friends, then nearly cried because he wasn’t sure he was ever going to see them again.

“Hey, you there!” Matthew heard a young female speak but he paid no attention until he heard, “I need this letter delivered to Aifread in Luin but this lug here won’t do it for me. Will you help me out?”

“Yes,” Matthew blurted out without stopping to think, stepping forward and catching sight of the speaker for the first time.

Her face lit up. “Really?!”

“Matthew, we can’t get to Luin unless we can cross the ocean,” Lloyd said.

Matthew looked at him in confusion. “But we have to do that anyways; what’s the harm in delivering one little letter?” Genis frowned at him, thoughts racing in the depths of his eyes.

The young woman clapped the man she was standing next to on the shoulder. “This guy can take you to Palmacosta,” she offered, and the sputtering protests of the owner of the boat was lost beneath her exuberance. His coherent protests were destroyed by her rather twisted logic, but the end result was that Matthew was handed a flower-scented envelope and they had passage to Palmacosta. It was a win-win situation, really.

“This,” Genis said once the boat had gotten underway. He was staring at the envelope Matthew was tucking into a side-pocket of his bag with an intense expression on his face. “This is what your friend yells at you for, isn’t it? Delivering people’s mail for them, escorting them around, and forgetting that you have your own things to do because of it.”

Genis had hit the nail on the head and Matthew couldn’t deny it. But that didn’t mean he had to _confirm_ it. Genis seemed to take his silence as confirmation anyways.

“You really like helping people out, don’t you?”

Matthew nodded. “Yeah.” He leaned on the railing, staring out at the distant line where the sky met the sea. “I did…something stupid, once,” he said, wondering why he was even saying this. It just seemed like something Genis needed to hear. “And it ended up hurting a lot of people. So I help, wherever I can. It doesn’t undo my mistake, it doesn’t fix what happened, and it certainly doesn’t erase all that hurt I caused but…it helps, just a little. It helps me remember that I can do something good, something right, and that even though I made a mistake, it was only that; a mistake. And as long as I learn from it, and keep it from happening again, then I can move on with my life.

“It’s a good thing to remember.”

“Oh,” Genis said faintly, staring up at him with something close to understanding. Matthew smiled at him as Genis turned to the same horizon he was looking at and saw something more than a line. “It sounds like a very good thing to remember.”

Matthew let out a little hum of agreement, ruffling Genis’ hair as Lloyd and Colette stood at the bow and exclaimed about the wildlife they could see in the water. Kratos, it seemed, was trying his hand at steering the boat, and Raine was… “Is your sister alright?” Matthew asked, seeing Raine clinging to the mast in terror.

Genis glanced over at her. “She’ll be fine once we reach land again,” he said. “She’s not fond of boats.”

“I suppose that’s why she tried to insist on us walking all the way to Palmacosta then.”

“Probably. Doesn’t help that it’s a small craft either; you can feel every wave we hit.”

Matthew shrugged. “Well, I like it,” he declared. “It has character.”

“We’ll be reaching Palmacosta soon,” the ship’s captain declared a few hours later. “Another twenty minutes or so.”

“Good,” Raine said with heartfelt relief. “I cannot wait to get off this infernal vehicle.”

Matthew winced at the insult to the boat. For being a small fishing craft not built for long distances she sailed beautifully, and after a long period of suffering on poorly built boats from Madra Matthew had learned to appreciate rare rides like this one.

 _‘But_ ,’ he thought as he watched Raine collapse to her knees once she was on the dock, ‘ _perhaps she really is that bad with boats_.’

Palmacosta was built on many small islands, interconnected by canals and bridges, and it was wreaking havoc on his senses. Not as much as sand did, but it was still annoying. And for being the largest city on Sylvarant, by Matthew’s standards it wasn’t very big. About the size of Lalivero, really, and though the town had grown since the Golden Sun, the desert port town was nowhere near the largest city on Weyard. It didn’t even hit the top ten.

Matthew shook those thoughts out of his head; it didn’t really matter, after all. Instead, he jogged a bit to catch up with Kratos. “Hey, do you mind if I go find the library?” he asked softly so Raine wouldn’t hear. “There are a couple things I wanna check out.”

Kratos looked at him impassively and Matthew fidgeted a bit under his gaze. Seriously, Kratos would totally outstare his dad, no problem. He twisted Efreet’s ring, just a little, and Kratos caught the gesture, his gaze softening slightly. “It’s over in the main square,” he pointed, “next to the academy. We will meet you there after we’ve restocked our supplies and found clues to the seal’s whereabouts.”

Matthew nodded at him gratefully, heading in the indicated direction. Behind him, he could hear Lloyd’s loud complaints and Colette’s high-pitched giggles growing softer with each step. To his surprise, he felt tension he hadn’t even noticed leak out of his shoulders; being around people constantly was more taxing than he remembered.

Glancing around, he managed to find the library, slipping in through the doors with barely a sound and gliding down the aisles looking for the history section. He stacked an armful of title-less books on a table in a secluded corner before diving in, trying to find anything familiar.

* * *

Of course, Matthew had overlooked one tiny, crucial detail. The might speak the same language, and old, ancient ruins might have the same writing as his world’s old, ancient ruins, but that didn’t mean the rest of the world did. And he couldn’t read _any_ of this stuff. Which meant if he wanted to learn _anything_ , he was going to have to ask questions. And with Kratos already so suspicious of him, that could end up being hazardous to his health.

He dropped his head to the table and groaned.

“Having trouble finding anything?” Matthew looked up at the voice and saw Kratos standing there looking amused.

“Yes,” he groaned, deciding to skip over the fact that the trouble he was having stemmed from the fact that he couldn’t read Sylvarant’s writing than any fault of the library’s.

Matthew banged his head on the table again. “This is stupid. Stupid and I hate it. I have a headache and I can’t read any of this shit and it’s. So. _Stupid_.” Sighing, he glanced up at the mercenary. “Did you have better luck than me?”

Kratos winced perceptively. “Somewhat.”

Slowly, Matthew stood up. “’Somewhat’ how?” he asked, following the man out of the library.

“Governor-General Dorr had a book that detailed the journey of the last successful Chosen and her journey,” Kratos said blandly.

“Sensing a ‘but’ somewhere in this conversation.”

Kratos gave him a Look. “ _However_ ,” he said, just to be contrary, “having heard that the Chosen was heading for Palmacosta, he handed it over to the first group of travelers who asked for it.”

“Lemme guess,” Matthew said. “It wasn’t you guys.”

“No.” Short and to the point. Had Matthew ever mentioned Kratos was scarily like Isaac? Seriously, if they looked a bit more like each other, they could be twins.

“So do we know where we’re going?”

“Hakonesia Peak.”

Matthew perked up at that. “Alright, another mountain!” Kratos turned to stare at him strangely. “I like mountains,” Matthew said defensively. “Mountains are nice, and I didn’t get to see much of the last one, what with me falling into a mine and all.”

* * *

Bandits. They were everywhere and Matthew hated them. He wished they would go die a painful death, preferably somewhere far away from him so he didn’t have to deal with them. But _no_ , the stupid bandits just had to try and rob them. Matthew had no idea why; it wasn’t like he had any money, and the rest of the group wasn’t much better off. They’d spent most of their gald in Palmacosta, getting supplies.

Raine finally decided to take pity on him. “It’s because of your sword,” she said after Matthew had finished ranting after the fifth ambush. “It looks very rare, and that makes it worth something.”

Matthew blinked. “Oh.” Then he scowled. “What, do they think I just carry it around because it looks pretty? It’s like they think I don’t know how to use it.”

“Perhaps it catches them off guard when you swing it with one hand,” Kratos stated dryly.

Matthew looked at him oddly. “How else am I supposed to swing it?”

“With both hands!” Genis yelped.

“Why would I do it that way?” Matthew was genuinely confused. “I need a hand free sometimes; strikes to block, spells to cast, all that good stuff.”

“But the weight,” Genis sputters.

“Well yeah, that’s why I can’t fight one-handed for an entire battle, but I’m not going to drop my sword just because I only have one hand.”

Genis dropped his head into his own hand. “I don’t know how to deal with this person,” he muttered, and Matthew thought maybe he wasn’t supposed to hear that.

Colette bounced forward. “Look! It’s a House of Salvation!” she chirped. “Can we rest there?” Kratos nodded, and Colette beamed, catching hold of Lloyd’s wrist. “Let’s go!”

Matthew had no idea what a House of Salvation was, but it looked sort of like an inn. In the middle of nowhere. Maybe it was just a rest stop for travelers.

He followed after Colette and Lloyd, figuring that someone should keep them out of trouble, and Genis still seemed to be having trouble deciding if Matthew was a real actual person and not a tree. Which, in all fairness, was a common reaction to him. So he trailed behind them as Colette rushed forward, eager to get inside and then-

Sheena.

He could sense Sheena inside the building.

He caught Colette by the back of her collar, pushing her behind him before she could open the door. As she looked at him quizzically, Matthew gently eased open the door near silently, in time to hear, “…will suffer. Please, help me save everyone.”

“Isn’t that…?” Colette whispered, and belatedly Matthew noticed the rest of the group had caught up.

“It’s that assassin lady!” Lloyd hissed, and giving up on the concept of stealth Matthew let the door swing all the way open to admit everyone inside. “What are you praying for?” Lloyd asked, louder, and if anyone else had asked it would have sounded accusing. Lloyd just sounded curious.

“The strength to save everyone,” Sheena said without turning around. She didn’t seem to realize who she was talking to. Then she registered Lloyd’s voice, and whirled around with panic in every movement. Caught off guard, Sheena could only stare at the large group of people between her and the door.

Colette clasped her hands together and beamed at Sheena, causing the wannabe assassin to back up a step. “That’s a wonderful thought! I’m Colette, and you’re Sheena, right? Matthew said that was your name.” She bowed her head to Sheena, her smile still on her face. “I’m still inexperienced as a Chosen, but I’ll do my best to regenerate the world!”

“I never asked for your name!” Sheena sputtered.

Colette flinched like she’d been struck. “Oh, that’s… I’m sorry.”

A flicker of guilt flashed across Sheena’s face. “I-I’m trying to kill you!” Sheena tried to snarl. It came out more like she was trying to convince herself of that than a declaration of intent.

“You’re doing a horrible job of that, Sheena,” Matthew said dryly. “Terrible, really.” This conversation was just proving his earlier thoughts; Sheena wasn’t a killer. She didn’t have it in her to be a cold-blooded assassin.

“I,” Sheena stuttered, as if she hadn’t expected him to call her out on it.

Colette was back to smiling again. “Yes. So I’m sure we can be friends!”

“Are you even listening to me?!” Sheena sputtered, looking cornered.

“Of course,” Colette nodded seriously. “You were praying. Prayer makes ones heart grow. I pray too, so I’m sure we can grow to understand each other.” Colette’s smile was sunshine incarnate. “Then we can be friends.” She was so sincere about it too; Colette really thought she could be friends with a woman trying to kill her.

Sheena was visibly composing herself. “I was praying that I’d be able to kill you,” she said coldly, her voice cracking slightly on the word ‘kill’. “I’ll be back,” she warned, raising her arm. “You’d better be ready next time.” And in another flash of smoke, Sheena was gone once again.

Matthew couldn’t stand the silence her departure brought, so he broke it. “She sure knows how to make an exit,” he remarked.


	5. Just when I thought things couldn't get any worse...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sylvarant was trouble, that had been easy for Matthew to see. It was only now that he learned just how fucked up it could be. Really, really fucked up.
> 
> And that was before he ran into something that reminded him of all his worst nightmares rolled into one monstrous package.

100,000,000 gald. Matthew wasn’t sure how much that was in comparison to Weyard’s monetary system, but judging by Lloyd and Genis’ reactions it was more than any one person could pay. And that pervert of an old man who had the book that Colette apparently needed to help with the Journey of Regeneration wasn’t helping matters. To top it off, they were now racing back to Palmacosta because the Desians were marching towards it.

Matthew thought that was a bad idea, seeing as how the Desians were trying to kill the Chosen and all, but at the same time he knew there was no way he could stay behind and not help. It was his gods-damned hero complex acting up again, really. It took three days for them to return to Palmacosta, though it had taken them over twice that to reach the peak, and Matthew would have marveled at that fact if they hadn’t stumbled upon an execution in the main square.

Gallows had been erected where none had been before, and a woman he’d never seen before stood upon the platform with a rope around her neck. Despite the imminent death that hung over her head, she stood proud and defiant, ignoring the armored soldiers that stood around her. Matthew was more interested in the man walking towards the gallows, having no trouble making good time despite the fact that the square was packed with people. Mostly because people were parting for him like he was some sort of royalty. And judging by the hissy-fit he threw when someone didn’t call him ‘Lord’ Magnius, he certainly fancied himself one.

It was all too high and mighty for Matthew’s taste.

“This woman,” one of the soldiers was saying, “defied the wishes of the great Lord Magnius and refused to provide us with supplies.”

“You tried to rob her store!” Lloyd hissed, hands clenching his sword hilts. Matthew looked back at him in surprise even as he barred the teen’s way forward. They must have met her while he’d been at the library.

“Therefore, while the designated death count has been exceeded,” another continued, “we have been granted orders to carry out this woman’s execution!” The designated what now? How much more fucked up could Sylvarant get?

“Where’s the city militia?” Genis asked. “Why aren’t they stopping this?”

“Most of the men are out on a training excursion with Governor-General Dorr,” a nearby man answered. “Too few remain to put up real resistance; they’ll only cause more deaths if they try.”

A warning bell went off in Matthew’s head.

_“Where are all the guards?” he muttered, cautious._

_Tyrell glanced at him. “What do you mean?”_

_“Wo knows we want that mask,” he said. “He knows we’re Adepts. He knows we have the skills necessary to get that mask. So why isn’t he stopping us from reaching it?”_

_“He probably thinks we’re still stuck down there, rotting,” Tyrell said flippantly, waving off Matthew’s concerns. Matthew wasn’t so sure; that strange woman who had control over the men wearing the same uniform as the ones who had ambushed them in the Konpa Caves sprang to mind. There had been something off about her. Something instinctively terrifying._

_Matthew’s concerns were validated when the five of them were surrounded after they emerged from the Ouroboros, Sol Mask in their possession._

_Notably, Tyrell was a lot less likely to brush off Matthew’s gut feelings after that._

This wasn’t quite the same feeling, but it still screamed ‘set-up’ to Matthew. The question was, was it the Desians being set-up…or the people of Palmacosta?

“Mom!” A girl around Matthew’s age tore past their group, fighting to get through the crowd. “Mom!”

“Chocolat!” Colette followed after her without pause. Matthew, too focused on keeping Lloyd calm, missed grabbing her wrist by a hair. Which meant the rest of their group followed Colette to the front of the crowd, making Matthew nervous. Really, shouldn’t they be running _away_ from the people trying to kill them?

“You think Governor-General Dorr will let you get away with this?!” the girl called Chocolat shrieked at the man named Magnius.

A second warning bell went off in Matthew’s mind as the large man threw back his head and laughed. “Dorr? Don’t get your hopes up, woman!” He was laughing as if the fact that a man with an army was no threat at all. Then he raised his arm to signal the execution.

Chocolat screamed and a rock whizzed by Magnius’ face, one sharp edge actually drawing blood. Matthew paused, tracking the trajectory to find where it had come from, and felt his heart stop when he saw the little boy on the edge of the crowd, one arm still frozen in the position it had been when he’d thrown the rock. “You disgusting little vermin,” Magnius snarled, spotting the boy at the same time.

He jumped off the gallows, Chocolat’s mother forgotten, stalking towards the little boy with single-minded menace. Until Lloyd intercepted him. “Stop right there!” A blade of mana shot through the crowd, harming no one until it rammed into Magnius, checking his stride. The little boy ran, and the crowd began streaming out of the square as the Desians began to prepare for a fight. Matthew grabbed Colette before she could be swept away or knocked over, pushing his way towards the gallows and Chocolat, who was hiding under the wooden structure.

“Can you get her down from there Colette?” Matthew asked urgently, keeping one eye on Lloyd, who seemed to be arguing with Raine. “We need to get the two of them out of here.”

Colette nodded determinedly. “I can do it,” she declared. “As long as you and Lloyd keep the ones over there busy.”

“I don’t think that’ll be a problem,” Matthew said dryly as the Desians recognized Lloyd.

“So, you’re the boy with the Exsphere,” Magnius laughed. “This is perfect. Once I take it from you, they’ll make me the leader of the Five Grand Cardinals!”

This guy was getting on his nerves.

Matthew slipped through the thinning crowd to join the rest of the group in facing off with Magnius as one of his soldiers began gathering fire mana. Matthew almost scoffed at how long it was taking him; any one of the people behind him could have attacked him five times over by now. The only reason they hadn’t was the people still surrounding them, hampering their movements. Genis even waited until the last second to block the fireball the man sent their way. “Amateurs,” he scoffed.

Matthew totally agreed, but it was better if Genis didn’t get so cocky. So he whacked the back of Genis’ head. “Arrogant brat,” he countered. “Pride will be your downfall one day if you aren’t careful.”

“Worthless idiots!” Magnius snarled, turning back to the gallows. “I’ll take care of-!” He stopped and stared, flabbergasted, as Colette flew down from the gallows, Chocolat’s mother safely in her arms, her wings reflecting the light in a dazzling spectrum.

“An angel…” someone from the remaining crowd whispered.

“The Chosen,” a woman corrected him, sounding just as awed.

“Do you all realize what you’re doing?!” Raine hissed, glaring at all four teens. “If you defy the Desians, this city will be attacked, just like Iselia.”

Both Genis and Lloyd flinched at those words. Then Lloyd stood up straight, a gleam that Matthew recognized surfacing in his eyes. Sveta got that gleam whenever she talked about the Tuaparang, that gleam that promised devotion and vengeance all at once. “I know what I’m doing,” he declared. “And I won’t repeat my mistake again. I’ll destroy them all, the entire ranch!”

Raine looked at him like he was crazy. “Lloyd, that’s insanity.”

Lloyd turned back to Magnius. “They’re only after Colette and me anyway.” Colette because of her status as the Chosen, but what did they want with Lloyd? That Exsphere thing Magnius was talking about earlier? “And what’s the point of saving the world if we can’t help the people right in front of us?”

Colette, who had rejoined them after gently depositing Chocolat’s mother on the ground, nodded in agreement. “I will fight for everyone’s sake.”

Raine sighed, a look of exasperated despair fliting over her face. “I give up. You’re all hopeless. But I’ll help.” She shook her head with a slight smile. “I’d be worried about you otherwise.”

“Damn you!” Magnius howled, launching himself forward. Matthew reacted on instinct, moving to defend the people standing behind him, when suddenly Kratos was just there, once again in front of him without Matthew even sensing him move. His sword cut deep into Magnius’ torso, drawing a lot of blood, and Magnius cursed again, stumbling away from the suddenly menacing swordsman. “Get rid of them!” the Desian howled at the men behind him.

A nearly crushing surge of mana emanated from the Desian who’d cast the fireball earlier, and both he and Magnius disappeared. There were fifteen to twenty men left behind, and one stalked towards Kratos like he had a death wish. “You will die for harming Lord Magnius,” he snarled. And the square erupted into a free-for-all, Matthew immediately having to duck a rain of icicles. He continued rolling away as a few other mages took potshots at him with ice. “C’mon,” he hissed, glaring at them as he was pushed further away from the main part of the fighting. “Give me something I can use.”

There! One of them had launched a fireball in his direction. Aborting his retreating motion, Matthew threw himself forward, letting the fire wash over him and letting it coat and stick to his sword. The Desian looked terribly surprised when Matthew emerged from the attack without a scratch and toting a flaming sword. Although that also could have been because Genis whacked him on the head with his kendama at the same moment.

He whistled at the good sized goose-egg the brat had given the man. “That thing can sure pack a punch when you least expect it to,” he remarked. Genis smirked at him before continuing on his own fiery warpath, breaking a few noses with the heavy ball attached to his weapon of choice. “This whole group of people,” he muttered to himself, sidestepping a whip and grabbing ahold of it, yanking the weapon out of the Desians grip and casually setting it on fire. “They’re all utterly terrifying. Don’t you agree?”

“Worthless scum!” the Desian snarled, and Matthew slid around a wild punch before retaliating with his own, socking the man on his unprotected jaw and knocking him out.

“And that is how you throw a proper punch,” he informed the unconscious man. Looking around, he saw that the free-for-all had ended with most of the Desians unconscious, though a few were dead. Kratos’ work, Matthew was willing to bet.

* * *

Chocolat and her mother, Cacao, insisted on them coming over for dinner. During dinner, Matthew was treated to the story of why, exactly, the Desians had tried to hang Cacao, and then talk turned to more mundane conversations that he didn’t join in, too busy cataloguing everything he was hearing so he could learn more about Sylvarant. And he was content to just passively listen until he heard Chocolat say, “But it’s not like I believe in Martel or anything.”

He paid closer attention to her after that, because everything he’d heard had proved that the Church of Martel was the biggest organization in this world, and their goddess the most important being. “Chocolat!” Cacao gasped, scandalized. “How can you say such a thing?”

Chocolat crossed her arms and, for lack of a better word, sulked. “I know, I know,” she sighed. “I’m grateful for the Chosen. But Martel didn’t protect Dad, or Grandma. And it was the Chosen and her companions who saved you, Mom. Not Martel. How can anyone believe in a goddess that sleeps while we suffer?”

Matthew tried not to scoff. He really, really did. But he couldn’t help it, and he suddenly had everyone’s attention at his disbelieving sound. So he had to explain. “That’s why humans learned to fight,” he informed her. “So we can protect what’s important with our own two hands. Maybe we’ll lose, maybe we’ll die, but,” he stared straight at Chocolat. “We sure as hell won’t do so quietly. Why are you waiting around for someone to save you when you can fight to save yourself?”

Chocolat sat up like he’d electrocuted her. “I’m not as strong-!”

He cut her off. “I didn’t say anything about being strong. You just have to refuse to fall because someone stronger than you pushes you over. Take that little boy,” he reminded her. “The one who threw the rock at that asshole earlier. He wasn’t strong at all, and if Lloyd hadn’t stopped Magnius in time he’d probably be dead now. But he still stood up and said ‘no’.” Having said that, Matthew stood up as well, glancing down at the delicious pasta dish he’d only half eaten and had no appetite for anymore. “I’m…going for a walk,” he decided. “Thank you for the meal,” he almost forgot to add.

“Matthew,” Lloyd started.

“You’ll find us at Palmacosta’s inn,” Kratos interrupted, and Matthew barely nodded to show he’d heard before exiting the item shop that doubled as Chocolat and Cacao’s home. He leaned against the closed door for a brief moment, glancing up at the sky before heading for the docks. With any luck, he’d be able to catch the sunset; ocean sunsets always made him feel better.

Forgoing the jetties, he dropped down onto the sand and took off his boots before heading further up the beach, away from the hustle of the city. He kept going until he found a deserted little cove, sitting so the waves were just shy of lapping at his feet. Then he flopped onto his back and screamed, a long, loud yell of frustration and anger and guilt and a million other bits and pieces of emotion he was too frazzled to identify.

“I cannot help but wonder,” a voice from behind him said dryly, and Matthew shot to his feet and spun around to see Kratos standing there. He blinked in surprise at the sight, wondering what the swordsman was doing here; earlier, he’d been perfectly content to let Matthew wander off alone. “If that scream was for something one of us said, or something we reminded you of.”

Matthew folded his arms over his chest and looked away from the man’s piercing gaze. “What makes you think you guys had anything to do with it?” he asked. “Maybe I was just frustrated because my dad isn’t here.”

“If that were the case you would have finished eating first,” Kratos remarked. “Or wouldn’t have ate at all, too upset and worried to do so.”

Matthew thought, not for the first time, that Kratos was remarkably like his father. Isaac was always able to read him effortlessly as well. “I just hate it,” he ground out, spinning back around to face the ocean and sitting again, this time letting the waves reach him. The cool water was soothing to his frayed nerves. “I hate it when people sit back and watch and let others fight for them, and then blame them for their suffering when they lose.”

Kratos sat beside him. “You sound as if you speak from experience.” Tell me, was the silent order tacked onto his remark, and Matthew couldn’t seem to disobey.

“It was…almost two years ago,” he started. “Back when I first got good enough to travel on my own and still had the confidence to do so. I ended up in this little village, deep in the mountains, so small and tiny I doubt anyone outside of it knew it existed. They’d been having a monster problem, and they asked me for help. I couldn’t turn them down; I’ve never had the heart to turn anyone down, and these people were desperate. I tried, but…”

He pulled on his bangs, dragging them down over his eyes. “There were too many monsters for me to handle on my own. So many. And I tried, so, so hard, but there was only one me, and I didn’t have any back-up at all, and…I almost died. Half the village did. The other half…let’s just say I’m no longer welcome and leave it at that.” He stopped tugging on his hair, staring unseeing at the sinking sun. “’S why I hate traveling alone, now. I used to be able to do it no problem, but now I can’t even go for a supply run by myself without breaking down and having a panic attack.” And didn’t that just sting like nothing else did.

Son of two of Weyard’s greatest heroes, a well-known hero due to his own merits, and standing alone terrified him like nothing else.

Pathetic.

“And the way Chocolat was talking earlier; it just _reminded_ me of that. She was mad at a goddess who didn’t seem to care, and I can’t really blame her for that; Martel really doesn’t seem to be doing much. But when push came to shove, she was the one to roll over and wait. What right does she have to criticize?” Not even the blazing reds and deep blues could chase away the darkness of his next thought either. “The whole of Sylvarant seems to do that a lot; wait and wonder and hide and hate. They wait for the Chosen to complete the Journey, wonder if they’re done, hide from the Desians, and hate the Chosen when it becomes clear they’ve failed.

“If Colette fails,” he said softly, steadfastly resisting to glance at Kratos. “They’ll hate her. They will sit in their homes as their children are snatched off the streets. And they’ll cry for them, and hope for their safe return, but they won’t take up arms and fight for it. They’ll just wait. Until they’re old and gray, they’ll wait for another Chosen to take up the mantle and deliver them to peace. And they’ll forget, that the last Chosen was a sixteen year old girl. They won’t even know her name was Colette Brunel, because no one, not one person, has ever asked for her name. They won’t tell their children that the last Chosen had a best friend who was an elf, and a crush on a boy named Lloyd, because they never knew. Because they never cared.”

His eyes were filled with water now, and he was talking more to himself, finally sorting through everything he’d learned. “They expect her to die for their happiness without giving a damn about her own. What right do they have to do that?” He swallowed his tears, refusing to let them fall. “They’ll praise the Chosen; but not one of them will mourn Colette. Lloyd will. And Genis, and Raine, and her parents, and maybe even I will. No one else. I doubt you would either.”

“What brings you to say that?”

Matthew rubbed at his eyes before continuing. “…You always call her ‘Chosen’, even though I’ve heard her tell you ‘Colette’ is fine. You’ve never…you’ve never called her by her name, even though she’s asked you to. You’re here because you were paid to be, Mr. Mercenary, and maybe also because the Desians are the reason you don’t have a family anymore, but you’re not here because you care about Colette. You don’t _want_ to care, and maybe that’ll make it easier for you in the end, but because you won’t care you won’t remember, and this part of your life will be forgotten beneath the rest of it. You might remember the Chosen, but you won’t remember Colette.”

He could feel Kratos boring a hole in the side of his head. “You are very observant,” the man finally said.

“’Notice everything’,” Matthew quoted, “’because there is nothing harder than trying to find something based on the shape of its absence’. Dad taught me that. And,” he hesitated before continuing. “I can’t afford to believe people are what they say they are, anymore. So I watch. I see and observe and catalogue and make damn sure that the people I let close won’t harm the people I care about. Because the consequences are too terrifying to imagine.”

* * *

They were halfway to Hakonesia Peak (again), resting momentarily at the House of Salvation (again), when the man from Palmacosta’s militia ran up to them (again). This time though, he brought news of Chocolat’s abduction. Matthew didn’t like it one bit. He knew Lloyd and Colette would agree to save anyone who’d been captured, but what were the odds that the abducted citizen was the one they knew personally? They weren’t good odds, which meant this was a planned, calculated trap. And they were willingly walking into it, because there was no way Matthew would be able to talk _himself_ out of this rescue attempt, much less everyone else.

Maybe he could get Kratos to try and stop everyone, although it was doubtful that would work.

“This is Hou Ju and Eoleo all over again,” he hissed to himself. And just like that instance, his finely honed instincts were screaming, ‘It’s a trap!’ at him. Like he hadn’t figured that out yet.

“Where’s Neil?” Raine said softly, peering into the forests gloom. Matthew didn’t like this forest either. It was beautiful, full of tall oaks and richly scented pines and flowering shrubs. But it was devoid of life. There was no chittering of squirrels and birds, no light footfalls belonging to larger game, and, even stranger, an inadequate amount of mana. He was amazed the forest was still standing without the substance all life on Sylvarant seemed to depend on. It was creeping him out.

So it was totally understandable that the materialization of a man from the shadows was met with hostility, his sword out before anyone could blink. The man stumbled backwards, his hands thrown above his head. “Wait wait wait!” he hissed, keeping his voice down due to the patrolling guards not even a hundred meters away. “It’s Neil!”

“Neil!” Matthew didn’t know who this guy was, but Lloyd’s relieved tone convinced him to put his sword away. “We heard Chocolat’s been kidnapped!” As bait, his mind helpfully tacked on to the end of that sentence.

“I know,” Neil nodded. “I need to speak with you all about that. Come this way.” He headed farther into the forest, away from the awful steel building known as a ‘human ranch’, and Matthew was slightly grateful for that. He was not looking forward to infiltrating that building, not a bit. Reaching a concealed clearing, Neil jumped straight to the point. “You need to leave the Palmacosta region.”

Shock flitted over everyone’s faces, but Matthew only narrowed his eyes and grimaced. Sometimes he hated being right. “But what about Chocolat?” Colette asked. “We can’t leave her!”

“Dorr is expecting us to help rescue her,” Genis argued with righteous indignation.

Neil looked cornered. Cornered and pained. “No, that’s-“

“A lie, right?” Matthew asked softly. Everyone turned to look at him, surprise entering the eyes of everyone but Kratos and Raine. “The militia won’t be coming, because this is a trap for the Chosen, isn’t it?”

Raine sighed. “Of all the possibilities, it had to be the worst one.”

“What are you talking about?” Lloyd demanded. “What do you mean, a trap?”

Kratos shook his head. “It was a mystery, that the Desians would leave a city with an army alone.”

“Choosing not to crush the seeds of rebellion must mean that they are not a threat,” Raine continued. “Indeed, they may even be beneficial.”

“But,” Colette tried to argue.

“You didn’t find it odd?” Matthew cut in. “That Dorr took most of his men out on a training exercise while his city was in the middle of what amounts to a siege? That he left only enough men to put on a show of protection without actually providing any? That the Desians _knew_ that would be the perfect moment to strike? That the _only person_ kidnapped after we arrived in Palmacosta was the _one_ person we’d spent any amount of time with?”

Colette shook her head. “That…can’t be.”

“No, it is as they say,” Neil admitted. “Dorr is working with the Desians to lead the Chosen into a trap.”

“Why would he do such a thing?” Genis sounded angry. Matthew supposed he would be angry too, if someone he thought was on his side worked with his enemy to kill his best friend.

“I don’t know,” Neil said, frustrated. “He used to think only of the well-being of his people. Even five years ago, when Clara died, he vowed to always fight against the Desians. He swore his wife’s death would not be in vain, and that his daughter would grow up knowing peace.” He shook his head. “At any rate, entering the ranch now will put the Chosen in danger. Please, you have to leave immediately! Leave Chocolat to me, and continue on your journey. Regenerate the world as soon as possible!”

Kratos was nodding. “Indeed. It would be best to abandon the situation here to those with less-pressing duties.” He glanced sharply at Lloyd as the boy opened his mouth to object. “We have a world to regenerate,” he reminded them all. It made sense. It made perfect sense. Colette had a duty to fulfill and they’d all agreed to help her accomplish it. But every single one of his morals was rebelling against the cold logic, begging him to not walk away.

“No!” Colette cried. “I can’t just ignore this!”

Genis was nodding along, his face set in grim determination. “Colette’s right. If we leave things as they are, Palmacosta will turn into another Iselia. I don’t want that to happen.”

Raine sighed. “What you say is true, but I must agree with Kratos. If you don’t wish to see cities destroyed, you should avoid contact with the Desians.” Both she and Kratos looked at Matthew as if they expected him to back them up and be responsible. On his other side, Genis, Colette, and Lloyd were doing the same thing, expecting him to help _them_.

He tugged at his bangs, a habit he’d never been able to break, before sliding over to stand more firmly with the other teens, ignoring the glare Raine sent his way. “Sorry,” he apologized, not really sorry at all. “But I’m with them on this. Believe me, I’d love to walk away.” Genis and Colette sent him scandalized looks for admitting this. “I know that sticking around will cause us more trouble than it might be worth, and that leaving it well enough alone is our best course of action. But I just can’t do it. Even knowing it’s a trap, I can’t just walk away from someone needing help. I’ve made too many mistakes to count, but that will never be one of them.”

It _wouldn’t_. Not ever.

Kratos sighed at the determination radiating off of all four of them. “Then I suppose we have two courses of action. Either we infiltrate the ranch anyways, without the back-up from Dorr, or we return to Palmacosta and confront him, learn what he knows about the ranch and its layout.”

“If we listen to logic, returning to Palmacosta is the better choice,” Matthew said. “We don’t know anything about that building,” he motioned in the ranch’s general direction, “and any knowledge he might have on it could give us the edge we need to get in and out alive and intact.” Five nods of agreement, and they were all racing back to Palmacosta. Again.

* * *

Dorr’s office was empty when they reached it, light and air filtering in from the open windows. Despite that, it felt heavy and dark inside the building, a sense of foreboding hanging in the air. “There are voices coming from downstairs,” Colette whispered. Everyone tensed and glances were exchanged before Kratos led the way down the stairs, closely followed by Lloyd and Colette. Now Matthew could hear the voices Colette had mentioned.

“When will my wife—when will Clara return to her original form?” Male, deep voice. Probably around forty or so. The Governor-General? Wasn’t his wife dead?

“Not yet.” The second voice held a hint of an echo, like the one speaking was wearing a helmet. “You still haven’t paid us enough gald. You’ve been paying us less and less,” the Desian leered as Kratos and Lloyd slid silently into the room to hide behind some of the multitudes of crates scattered about. Matthew tugged on the back of Colette’s robes to stop her from following.

“This is the best I can do!” Dorr sputtered. Matthew, peering around the corner of the stairwell with Colette pressed against his back, got his first good look at the man. Blond hair long enough to be pulled into a short ponytail at the nape of his neck and a beard reminiscent of Isaac’s, Dorr’s eyes held an emotion he’d seen only once before; on Volechek’s face, when the Beastman King of Morgal told them exactly why he had been working with the Tuaparang to activate Luna Tower. A combination of desperation and drive and the determination to never lose what was important again.

A dangerous combination, especially when found in a man with power.

“The tolls, the municipal taxes, the offerings to the Church of Martel—there’s nowhere left to squeeze money from!” 100,000,000 gald, Matthew remembered. It suddenly made so much more _sense_.

The Desian sniffed haughtily. “Well, I suppose this will do for today. I’m sure Lord Magnius will remove the demon seed depending on your next contribution.” The Desian vanished in a surge of mana, his teleport spell erasing all trace of him ever being there.

There was a little girl with her blonde hair done up in pigtails Matthew hadn’t noticed before, standing in the corner and looking up at her father with big brown eyes. “Father,” she said plaintively, and a shiver ran down Matthew’s spine because _holy Venus that was not a natural child._

Dorr turned to the Unnatural instantly, his face softening. “Just a little longer,” he promised. “Just a little more and Mommy will be back to normal. I’ll raise the fees on the pilgrimage and-“

“So you _are_ in league with them,” Lloyd snarled, stepping out from behind the crates. Kratos followed half a step behind, and Matthew allowed Colette and the others to finally enter the room, his eyes flitting from the Unnatural to the man, unable to decide which was likely to be the bigger threat. Dorr was the Governor-General of this city; he could make things very inconvenient for them with a single word. The Unnatural didn’t feel very powerful, but the sheer fact that something like it would never have happened without outside interference made him wary.

Dorr spun around, his face draining of color as he took in their motley group.

“What’s the matter?” Lloyd taunted, his hands wrapped around the hilt of his swords. “You look like you just saw a ghost.”

“That’s a really clichéd line,” Genis felt the need to point out.

“What are you doing here?!” Dorr cried. “Neil! Where’s Neil?!”

“Alive,” Matthew informed him. “And with a much stronger sense of morals and strength of will than you have. Rather sad, since this city looked to you as their pillar of strength.”

Dorr growled. “So, Neil betrayed me.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but I could have sworn Neil said your wife died five years ago. So what’s all this about ‘just a little longer’?”

Lloyd looked at Dorr curiously. “Was she taken hostage or something?”

“Hostage?” There was a crazed gleam in Dorr’s eyes that Matthew didn’t particularly care for. “Don’t make me laugh. If you want to see Clara,” he stalked over to one of the cells that lined the basement walls, a cloth hung over the door to block the view of the inside. With a furious yell, Dorr yanked away the cloth. “She’s right here!”

 _Holy Venus that wasn’t natural either_.

On the edge of his hearing, Matthew noticed Kratos stifle a gasp. He was too occupied with the… _thing_ in front of him to wonder why.

It was sick, twisted, the mana inside the creature knotted up and tangled and seething and writhing and _hurting, oh Venus it hurt, hurt, go away go away go away go away, dark, dark, dark, sorry sorry so sorry Volechek so hurt so dark, they didn’t know I did know couldn’t let them know, so sorry can’t untwist you can’t fix it can’t make it better, don’t know how can’t do it not good enough sorry I’m not good enough to help so sorry wish I was wish I could do something other than mercy kill, Venus please let there be another option I don’t want to do this don’t make me do this, please, Volechek snap out of it. Venus help him don’t make me don’t want to but I will if only so they don’t have to, weight of life a heavy burden too heavy for them won’t let them carry it when I can do it just as well as they can but I’m so sorry I’m not good enough to find a second option, so sorry there isn’t enough time to even consider one I wish there was oh Venus I’m so sorry, your blood’s on my sword and my hands not theirs and that’s good enough, right?_

_Please, please let that be enough._

The scent of blood snapped him back to the present. “The Goddess Martel would never lend her aid to an inferior human being!” the Unnatural sneered, blood coating her arm from fingertip to elbow. Slowly, slower than Matthew could ever remember moving, he looked down at her feet. Dorr was lying there on the ground, copious amounts of blood seeping from a gaping hole in his back.

_My fault my fault life giving liquid spread everywhere because I wasn’t good enough because there’s no coming back from that twisted tangled knot of mess._

“That’s a laugh.” The Unnatural closed her eyes, her hair turning gray as a bright flash overtook everything-

_-should have been me it was my mistake I should have paid for it-_

“I am a servant of Pronyma, leader of the Five Grand Cardinals who rule over the Desians,” the skeletal purple-tinted abomination proudly proclaimed. “I was merely assigned to observe the new human cultivation technique, developed by Magnius. There’s no way that a superior half-elf such as I, could have a fool of a father like this!” she spat.

“A fool of a father?” Colette whispered.

The Unnatural laughed. “Just look at him!” She stepped on him-

- _don’t do that you fucking bastard swordsman don’t you step on a man who has more honor and courage than you’ll ever see in your lifetime don’t you fucking dare!-_

“-notice his daughter was dead, too busy chasing after medicine that doesn’t exist in order to save his monster wife!” She laughed again.

“You,” Lloyd snarled, drawing his swords and-

- _damn it can’t reach can’t stop them stop them have to stop them make them stop don’t let them hurt him more dark too dark no stop it stop it stop it don’t let them Volechek, don’t let them do this to you, to her don’t, stop, you can’t want this I know you don’t want to hurt her I know you are a good king, a good brother, you can’t possibly have wanted this can’t let them won’t let them stop them stop them stop-_

He looked down at his chest in a daze, a skeletal scorpion’s tail sprouting from the spreading crimson stain. “Matthew!” three voices cried, and a flash of silver severed the tail from the body before it could retract and unplug the hole. His knees buckled and he couldn’t remember hitting the ground but he was somehow down on it anyways, and it was second nature to pull at the earth’s energy. It felt different somehow, not the way he remembered it being when he’d practiced over and over again in the garden with Dad’s steady hand against his back, but he chalked that up to his fuzzy head.

Breathe, Isaac had told him. In and out. You have to be calm, or all you will do is waste your energy. You must control your emotions, not let them control you. Pull at the earth, gently, gently, don’t let go but don’t force it either. You are friends, family, and all you need to do is ask.

So he did.

The tail was forced out of his flesh as his skin healed over, golden brown light erupting from the earth and dazzling everyone in the immediate area. He heard the Unnatural squawk in surprise as the flash caused her to miss her attack and stumble. He felt Kratos take advantage of that and sink his sword deep into her torso, sensed Raine and Colette rush to his side as the light began to die down. Could feel the Unnatural tear open the cage door.

Could feel Clara stepping outside the cage.

 _‘NO,’_ he thought rather desperately. ‘ _No, Venus, you can’t make me make this choice again, please no.’_

“No,” he heard Lloyd echo. “Not again.”

“Stop!” Colette cried, hunched over Matthew like she could protect him from the seething mass of twisted mana.

Clara listened, running off before anyone could raise a weapon against her. Matthew was so, so glad. He slowly pushed himself up, the sweeping, golden light of his Cure still stubbornly sticking to him; patching him up so completely the only indication he was ever injured was the giant hole in his shirt, and the bloodstains spattered everywhere.

“Kilia,” Dorr coughed out. “Is Kilia safe?”

…Did he not remember her literally stabbing him in the back?

“She’s,” Genis hesitated, unsure of how to continue.

“Long dead,” Matthew rasped out, crawling over to sit next to Dorr. Colette let out a sound of objection, whether because of his blunt truth or movement he didn’t know.

“I see,” he whispered. “I truly am a bad father.”

Matthew tugged at his bangs before disagreeing. “No. You were an idiot, yeah, but that didn’t make you a bad father. You were just trying to make your family whole again. I can fault you for how you tried to do it, but I don’t believe any of us here would fault you for the fact that you tried. I don’t think anyone would call you a bad father. A bad _Governor-General_ , on the other hand…they might call you that.”

Dorr choked on a laugh. Or a sob, Matthew couldn’t tell the difference. “Thank you, for the truth,” he rasped out. Shakily, he reached into his robe and pulled out a thin sheet of…polycarbonate? “The passcode is 3341,” he said, handing it over to Matthew, who passed it up to Lloyd. “Please, save Chocolat. Don’t let another parent go through what I have. And please,” Dorr turned to look at Matthew, mustering up the last of his strength. “If you find a way to save Clara—if you can help her return to her human form—please, I beg of you, help her. It is a selfish request, but…”

Matthew patted the man on his shoulder. “I have never stopped looking for a second option,” he admitted quietly. Lloyd, Genis, and Kratos stiffened at that. “If I can find it, I will help her. Promise.”

“Thank you,” the man said quietly. Then he died, just like that.

The end.

“Matthew?” Colette asked uncertainly, her hand falling onto his shoulder, concern permeating her voice. “Are you okay?”

Distantly, he realized he was shaking.

“You don’t look so good,” Lloyd said, crouching next to him.

“Your chest is fine,” Raine remarked, finishing her examination. “Not even a scar left; how did you do that?”

“Matthew?” Genis was standing next to Lloyd. “What happened? You just…you froze, in that fight. No, before it even started. You…you froze…froze when you saw…”

He tipped his head backwards, leaning against Raine. “Just brought back some old memories,” he said, ignoring the tremor in his voice. “An old nightmare. That’s all.”


	6. ...Life decided to pop out of the bushes and punch me in the face

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Even with people who understand, trauma can be a bitch to deal with. Especially when your trauma means you accidentally got yourself stabbed and ended up with new trauma on top of the old trauma.
> 
> He'd say he was having a bad day, but if Matthew was being honest, he hadn't been having a good MONTH.

The trek back to the Palmacosta Ranch was silent, and though many times on this journey Matthew had once wished for Lloyd to shut up, he now wished the other boy was talking. That anybody was talking, really. Because then they wouldn’t be staring at him like they could get him to spill all his secrets that way. He wasn’t going to. He could barely talk about what had happened to the friends that had stood with him through everything; there was absolutely no way he could talk about Volechek to a party of almost strangers.

Neil insisted on coming with them to help save Chocolat.

Kratos warned them all to be wary.

Raine looked at Matthew in concern.

Matthew resolutely ignored them all. He was getting good at that. Too good, really. But he still wasn’t going to share the source of his panic. He couldn’t. “What’s that thing?” Genis hissed, bringing Matthew’s focus back to the present. Where he really should stay for a while, seeing as how they were invading enemy territory. And screw holding back for now; as long as they were in that building, he would strike hard and fast and damn the consequences. They could get stronger later, when their lives weren’t in terrible danger.

“Magi-tech,” Raine answered, walking over to the strange waist high pedestal. A flat, vertical piece of what looked like more polycarbonate was attached to one side, and there were buttons on the flat part that held characters he still couldn’t read. Stupid otherworldly writing systems. “Dorr said the password was 3341, correct?”

Lloyd nodded. “Do you need the keycard?”

“Yes, it looks like you have to slide it before you can enter anything,” she said. Then she sighed. “If only I could study this more in depth,” she lamented, fingers flying over the buttons. “I’d love to know how they made this work.”

The out-of-the-way side door slid open. “Let’s just hurry up and take care of this,” Lloyd muttered, cautiously leading the way.

Genis followed close behind, face downcast. “Yeah, I don’t want to stay here very long.” Matthew waited for the rest of the group to file after them, taking up the rear with Kratos.

“Perhaps now is not the time to hold back,” he muttered to his fellow swordsman, and Kratos looked at him appraisingly. “I won’t. They can get stronger later, after we get out of here alive. Unless you have a different reason for hiding?” he wondered.

Kratos stared at him for a long moment, his eyes unreadable, before sweeping past him into the depths of the Human Ranch.

It was a maze on the inside. A maze of concrete and tiles and harsh lights, and Matthew hated it instantly as he attempted to breathe through all the stagnant mana in the air. He honestly didn’t understand how the rest of them could walk through it like they didn’t even notice it hanging in the air. Maybe they didn’t.

“This way!” he hissed, ducking through a door and pulling the rest of them after him.

“What are you,” Genis started to ask, but Lloyd clapped a hand over his mouth.

A few heartbeats later, footsteps sounded down the hall they’d just been in. “What’s the status for the trap for the Chosen’s group?” a voice asked.

“Nearly complete,” a second answered. “That scum seemed certain they’d be idiotic enough to fall for it; all we have to do is patrol around so when they do break in it doesn’t look too empty and make them suspicious.”

The voices faded out and Kratos stared at him with that unreadable expression again. This time Raine joined him, but they both seemed to realize that now was a bad time for questions. Something to look forward to when they got out of here.

Joy.

“Nice save,” Neil whispered. “I know they want us to get deeper than this so they wouldn’t have put up much of a fight anyways, but it’ll be easier to get out if we don’t have to fight our way in.” Matthew only nodded, concentrating on making his head spin less. They needed to get this done fast, or Matthew was going to pass out again.

Kratos took the lead after that, and everyone was more than happy to let him; Matthew brought up the rear, more because of the fact that he was having trouble walking fast then any real plan. They had to hide from two more ‘patrols’, but eventually they made their way into a room that was filled with holding cells.

“It’s the captives,” Genis muttered, voice full of disgust as he stared at the iron bands around a child’s neck.

Colette’s eyes were wide and soft, and Matthew knew what the next words out of her mouth would be. “Please, we have to save them.”

Surprisingly, Raine agreed this time. “Knowing what would happen to them if we left them, there’s no way we can.”

Kratos looked like he disagreed, but he didn’t _say_ so, so Matthew didn’t bother pointing it out. Now wasn’t the time for the argument that would set off.

“Chocolat’s not here; should we split into two groups?” Lloyd suggested, looking nervous.

Matthew instantly vetoed that idea. “No,” he said shortly, rubbing his throat. Venus, his mouth was _dry_. Mana was supposed to be a force of life in Sylvarant, so _why did it feel like it was slowly killing him?_ He licked his lips, trying and failing to summon up some moisture, and continued speaking. “We’re not a strong enough force to consider splitting up. And of course Chocolat’s not here, she’s _bait._ That Magnius guy will want her close by him, so he can crush us within sight of our goal.”

Kratos was _staring_ at him again.

Neil stepped forward. “You can leave them to me,” he declared. “Members of Palmacosta’s militia will be arriving soon. As the majority of them were unaware of Dorr’s betrayal, they truly believe they are marching here to free their families. Without the Chosen as hostage,” he nodded at Colette, “the Desians will have no way to stop them. I will lead them here, and together we will free our people.”

Kratos nodded once at the man. “Then we will leave your home to you. Come,” he said to the group at large. “Matthew is correct; Magnius will have Chocolat near him, so we must be prepared.”

The doors of the cells were all opened, and people were muttering to one another and staring at Colette. Whispers about the Chosen were floating through the air as they headed back out into the main part of the base. “We should secure the control room,” Raine declared. “Doing so will help Neil and the militia get their people out safely.”

“Magnius will most likely be there as well,” Kratos reasoned. “It’s the center of any ranch.”

The way Kratos said ‘any’ made Matthew wonder if he’d been in one before now. As the mercenary led them through countless hallways and warp panels (ugh, now Matthew was _really_ going to pass out), he decided that answer was ‘yes’. He moved through the ranch too confidently for it to be his first time in one. A final warp panel, and they were in a room that had countless bits and bobs of what Raine had called magi-tech. The high concentration of stale mana in the air nearly made Matthew choke.

“So, the forsaken Chosen and her entourage of vermin have finally arrived,” someone mocked. “Such an inferior group of beings.” Something descended from the ceiling, and Matthew was annoyed that he was impressed by the metallic throne Magnius was reclining comfortably on. “But then, what could be expected by a bunch of filthy _humans_ ,” he spat, hissing the word ‘humans’ like it was the worst curse he knew.

On the other side of the room, Chocolat was struggling in the hold of one soldier, while a group of six others were circling around them. Colette shrank against Lloyd. “We’re surrounded!”

Magnius gave a sarcastic wave. “I knew your every move,” he continued, gesturing towards a blank wall. With the push of a button from yet another Desian, the screen crackled to life, and a picture of an empty hallway popped up.

Then, to Matthew’s astonishment, Neil appeared on the wall, followed by some of the city’s militia and the captives they had freed. Colette gasped. “How did Neil get in there?”

“It’s more magi-tech,” Raine explained, glaring at Magnius. “It’s a projector that displays what is going on elsewhere. The cameras must have caught us too.”

Lloyd groaned. “You mean all that sneaking around was for nothing? We should’ve just charged in from the beginning.”

Magnius scoffed. “As if such a thing would have helped you, vermin.” He glared at the Desian operating the magi-tech, and Matthew took note of the button he pressed to shut all the doors of the room Neil and the others were currently in. It was possible the same button could open them. “A wasted effort!” Magnius crowed. “Everything you’ve done is meaningless.”

“How so?” Lloyd challenged. “We’ll just rescue them after we take care of you!”

Magnius smirked. “Big words from someone who so carelessly brought disaster to Iselia,” he taunted, and despite himself Matthew found he watched Magnius closer after that as Lloyd and Genis both stiffened in shock.

Everyone but Kratos was from Iselia, he remembered, but none of them had talked about disaster befalling it.

“I know!” the red-haired bastard continued. “How about I recreate the scene with those inferior vermin? Unleashing even one of their Exspheres will be enough to slaughter them all. After all, not everyone has the right mindset to murder someone they used to know, even if they were a monster.”

Matthew decided he’d let this old man monologue long enough. “Don’t you fucking dare,” he snarled, leveling the Sol Blade at him. The Desians around them began to advance at that, but Magnius lifted a hand to stop them.

“But it will be fun,” the man said, voice gleeful. Matthew silently upgraded him from ‘bastard’ to ‘psychopath’. He stared straight at Lloyd and Genis. “It’ll be just like that old lady you killed. What was her name…?”

Genis was hyperventilating, staring up at Magnius with horror in his eyes. Lloyd was snarling at him, sounding like an enraged beastman.

“Ah yes. Marble, was it?”

And from Chocolat, a quiet, disbelieving, “What?” Matthew’s eyes immediately slid to her, taking in her shocked expression. “You can’t mean…”

Magnius slouched back into his throne. “But I do, Chocolat,” he mocked. “Your dear old granny was sent to the Iselia ranch.” Genis was shaking his head violently, mouthing the word ‘No’ over and over again. Magnius continued anyways. “Where Lloyd and Genis killed her. I heard she met a pitiful-!”

Matthew’s Cast took everyone in the room completely by surprise as plants erupted from the ground and ensnared the Desian holding Chocolat while encasing her protectively. “You talk too much,” he informed the psychopath, before leaping over a strike from a circling Desian. A slash of his sword across the man’s back severed his spine, killing him instantly, and Matthew flinched at the spray of blood.

But he didn’t have time to question his morals again; he had people to protect.

“If you want a monster,” he continued, voice low and dangerous. “I’ll show you one. I have to warn you though, you likely won’t survive the experience!” With that, he lunged at Magnius, shifting to the side to slide around another guard, the Sol Blade glinting dangerously in the harsh lights.

Magnius leapt from his chair, jumping over Matthew and barely bringing his own sword up in time to block Matthew’s blade as he spun on his heel, chasing the bastard. Magnius grunted as the strike connected, knocking him back a few feet. Matthew snarled, eyes locking upon Magnius’s own, and a deep, dark instinct took pleasure in the spark of fear he found there. “You should have kept your mouth shut,” he hissed, putting more power into his sword, feeling the Mars energy burning.

Magnius smirked, but the edges wavered as he was pushed back further. “I fear no human,” he boasted.

Matthew answered with a smirk of his own, feeling his eyes flash. “Your mistake,” he shot back as the energy surged. He skipped back a step and Magnius stumbled forwards, leaning against a support that was no longer there, as Matthew flipped into the air. Just because he could.

His sword sparked, and the flame lit. “Radiant Fire!” His cry was more of a howl; he’d been spending far too much time in Belinsk. Matthew swung the Sol Blade, sharp and vicious, and watched as fire spilled from its edges. It raged through the room, and he heard shrieks from Colette and Chocolat, but the fire went nowhere near any of his allies. Of course it didn’t; they were his flames. And they _burned_.

The Desians were screaming, but that sound was already dying down as Matthew landed, glancing over to make sure no one else was hurt. Colette was staring at him, her wide blue eyes reflecting the scene in front of her.

Standing in front of the dancing flames, his sword drawn, Matthew thought he’d never looked more like the devil.

* * *

The self-destruct program Raine created was a beautiful piece of work, but Matthew would have liked to tear the place down wall by wall. Raine’s solution was faster though, and Matthew didn’t really need any more work; he was trying to mediate between Chocolat and the rest, despite the fact that he just wanted to find a corner to curl up in and retch until he couldn’t taste the blood anymore.

“I won’t listen to anything you murderers say!” Chocolat screamed, and once again Matthew mourned the loss of his patience.

“Shut up,” he snarled, and miraculously, everyone did, even Neil, who’d met up with them outside the ranch as the rest of the militia began escorting the previous captives back. “Just shut up.” He refrained from saying anything worse, as Genis was present and Raine was likely to kill him if he expanded the boy’s vocabulary. Not to mention both Lloyd and Colette were hopelessly naïve and he didn’t want to have to explain. “You will listen to them explain what happened, because Magnius was a psychopath who got a kick out of turning people into literal monsters and you will not believe anything he said. Bastards like him always twist the truth to suit their own needs.”

“I don’t need-!”

“I. Said. Listen.”

Chocolat’s mouth shut with an audible click, and she turned angrily to Lloyd and Genis. “Well?” she hissed, aggression in her voice and body language. Clearly, she didn’t expect to believe anything they said.

The boys tried anyways.

“Marble…Marble was a friend of mine,” was how Genis began, and already Matthew wanted to cry. “I used to visit her at the ranch all the time; I’d bring her food and snacks and bake her cookies, and she’d tell me stories. Stories of her home, and her son and his wife, and their daughter. Of her shop and her wares and how her husband had built it for her board by board. And then-then on the day of the Oracle, we got caught.

“Lloyd was with me at the time, and I guess we’d been too loud or something, because one of the guards ran over, and-and we tried to help, but-and they saw us somehow, because the next day the Cardinal marched into town and he had this-this _monster_ with him.”

Matthew almost couldn’t breathe.

Lloyd stepped forward to continue speaking when it became clear Genis couldn’t continue. “It…started attacking people. Not caring that they were elderly, or children, or innocent. Me and Genis, we had to stop it.”

“That was my grandma!” Chocolat snarled, spinning to face him.

Lloyd wilted under her glare. “We didn’t know that,” he whispered. “We didn’t know that until-until…”

In an echo of a memory, Matthew heard Tyrell moan, _“Mars, what did we just do?”_

“They’d twisted her,” Genis sniffed, wiping at his eyes. “So much that we couldn’t recognize her.” More tears rolled down his cheeks. “Marble was my friend and _I didn’t recognize her!”_ he wailed.

 _“How!?”_ Sveta howled. _“How did I not see it was you!?”_

Raine moved to hold her brother, and Genis curled into her chest, grieving for his friend and leaving Lloyd to finish the tale alone. “We-we’d managed to beat her. But we didn’t kill her!” he protested. “She was still alive and then-!” His gaze dropped to the ground. “The Cardinal went to kill us. If that blast had hit us, we’d be dead. But Marble moved in front of us.” Lloyd wiped at his own eyes. “She got her humanity back just in time to die for us.”

 _“Take care of my sister,”_ Volechek commanded.

No, no, Matthew didn’t want to think about that.

Genis pulled away from his sister long enough to say, “The last thing Marble said was that she loved me like a grandson,” he admitted, his eyes red-rimmed and swollen. “And that I had so much life ahead of me that I still needed to live.” Chocolat’s own eyes were shining. “I’m sure she would say the same to you.”

_“Live, dear sister. For our people…and for me.”_

No, no, no! Stop it! Stop thinking about it!

Matthew shut his eyes and took a deep breath.

He was fine.

He _was_ fine.

He was _fine._

 _He_ was fine.

 _He was fine_.

A high-pitched female wail.

_“Volechek!”_

Matthew flinched.

A hand landed on his shoulder and his eyes snapped open. Startled, he was halfway through the motion of drawing his sword before his panicked mind recognized Kratos, and he fell back into the present. It wasn’t Sveta crying; it was Chocolat, on her knees with her face buried in her hands and screaming for her grandma. Colette had her arms wrapped around her, and Neil awkwardly stood guard. Genis was once again buried in Raine’s chest, so the only ones staring at Matthew were Kratos and Lloyd.

“Neil,” Kratos’ voice sounded almost normal. “Could you escort Chocolat back to Palmacosta?”

Neil nodded. “Of course,” he answered at once. Colette reluctantly let go of the other girl, and Neil managed to get her up and moving by mentioning her mother. “You shouldn’t make her worry a second longer than you have to.”

Matthew knew his face was pale, and he couldn’t stop himself from shaking. Flashbacks always brought shaking with them, though he wasn’t sure why. And Colette, now that she no longer had Chocolat to occupy her attention, noticed. “Matthew? Are you alright?”

Woodenly, he shook his head no; there was no point in lying when he looked the way he did. He was a horrible liar anyways. “I’ll be fine in a few minutes,” he heard himself say as if from far away. “I just need a few minutes.”

But it took five, then fifteen, then twenty before Matthew felt even remotely close to himself again. By then, even Genis had stopped crying and was looking at him in concern. “Are you sure you’re okay?” the boy asked timidly.

“I’m fine now,” Matthew lied.

Kratos, whose hand was still on his shoulder, immediately called him out on it. “You are still trembling,” the man informed them all at large.

“’s cold,” Matthew bluffed, and not even Lloyd believed that. Wow, he was a _terrible_ liar. Where was Amiti when you needed him?

“Matthew, what’s wrong?” Colette asked.

“This is the second time you’ve froze like this,” Lloyd pointed out. “Just now, when we were talking about Marble…and when you saw Clara.”

_Twisted mass of wrong and dark-_

Stop it stop it stop it!

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said. His voice was steadier than he thought it would be.

Raine placed her hand on his other shoulder. “It’s tearing you to pieces,” she said. “Please, let us help. Bottling things up is unhealthy.”

Matthew shrugged off their hands, curling into himself and trying to not _care_. Trying not to realize that _they_ cared, for some odd reason, even though they’d met less than three weeks ago. He didn’t last very long. Because Raine was right, it was tearing him to pieces. Normally when it got this bad, he would talk to his dad, or Tyrell. But neither of them were here right now; all he had was Raine, and Kratos, and Lloyd and Genis and Colette. But they could understand. They _could_ because the parallels between their situations were frightening in their similarity.

“A friend of mine,” he whispered, giving up and sitting down, knowing that once he was done talking he was going to be too emotionally drained to go anywhere. “Her brother. I’d only met him once and we made bad impressions on each other; I didn’t like him very much. The feeling was mutual. And then he went and got himself killed. At least, that’s what we’d thought had happened.

“She cried. She cried and I hated him more for doing that to her, but we were running for our lives and we were running out of time, so I pushed aside my own feelings and kept us moving. And then they caught up to us.” He kept the details as vague as possible, thinking they wouldn’t take the news that he was from a different world entirely well. “They had this…thing, with them. It didn’t feel like a monster to me, even when I first saw it, but it certainly wasn’t human either. It attacked us, so we defended ourselves.”

He heard Genis gasp, and Lloyd sat down next to him. Matthew continued speaking, void of emotion, because if he stopped to let himself feel he wouldn’t be able to start again. “But it still felt odd to me. And halfway through the battle, when it didn’t strike her even when she was wide open, it clicked. I knew exactly what—who—we were fighting and I,” he raked his fingers through his hair, making it fly in even more directions. “I didn’t say anything.

“I couldn’t,” he laughed, hollowly. “I couldn’t say a damn thing, because I knew if they knew, they’d stop fighting. And then they would die, and that was the one thing I swore wouldn’t happen, no matter who I needed to go through to make sure of it. And I couldn’t see a second option; we were running out of time and I was desperate, so desperate to get them out of there alive, and I felt so ashamed for thinking it but I thought, ‘They already believe him to be dead. If I say nothing, nothing will change.’ And it wouldn’t have, except before I could talk myself into striking the final blow she recognized him.”

He closed his eyes, unable to stop the flood of memories assaulting him. “The looks on their faces…”

_“Mars, what did we just do?”_

_“How? How did I not see it was you?!”_

_“That can’t be Volechek. It can’t be!”_

_“Impossible. He died. He died in Belinsk, with his people, as all kings should.”_

_“They made ‘im a monster…”_

_“How could such a thing be possible?”_

_“This dark and twisted method… could bring only pain.”_

“I couldn’t do it, after that, and we were caught in their trap. Unable to move forward without abandoning one of our own, unable to backtrack without running into them. There was no way out and I was certain we were going to die, so I decided I’d take some of them with me. And if even one of my friends lived because of that, then I’d gladly do it again and again.”

“What happened to…to your friend’s brother?” Colette asked when he paused for a long while, trying to collect himself.

“He died for me,” Matthew said bluntly. “For me and her. We were almost—it should’ve killed us—and I can’t help but think, even now, two years later, about what might’ve happened if he hadn’t been nearly dead anyways from fighting us. If I had noticed sooner, tried harder to get him to recognize us, _told her_ so she could’ve tried to rescue her brother—if I had done any of those things, I wonder if he would’ve survived.

“It was my fault.” Matthew buried his face in his knees, the concern in the faces of the people around him making him sick. He didn’t deserve that worry. “It was my mistake, and I should’ve been the one who paid for it, not him.”

Lloyd put a hand on his shoulder, and he shrugged it off the same way he’d shrugged off Kratos. He didn’t want pity, or concern, or sympathy; didn’t think he deserved it even if he wanted it. He just…wanted…to not have to carry it around anymore. To…to be able to leave it in the past, where it belonged, without having it shoved in his face every time he closed his eyes. To not have to hear his friends scream every time he fell asleep.

“That is why you’ve never stopped looking for a second option,” Raine realized, and Matthew let out a bitter laugh, still not looking at any of them.

“Yeah,” he admitted. “It won’t do Volechek any good but…if it could help anyone else, make so they wouldn’t have to feel like…like _this_ , I’d consider it my life well spent.” There was beautiful, blessed silence for a few minutes while they all sat and processed Matthew’s story. Matthew was the one to break it. “So what about you, Kratos?”

The mercenary started. “What about Kratos?” Lloyd asked, confused.

Matthew looked up at the man, who looked like he was remembering Matthew tell him people-reading was a survival skill. “Well, you and Genis told us of your heartbreaking past, and none of you would let me keep my secrets. So I figured since we were all sharing, Kratos should as well.”

“And if I didn’t wish to?” he countered.

Matthew shrugged. “I can wait; not like I’m going anywhere for the foreseeable future anyways. And I doubt they’d let it go _now_ ,” Matthew said, gesturing to the rest of the group. Indeed, Lloyd looked ready to pounce on the man and Colette was looking at him with big, watery eyes.

 _‘Look what you’ve done,’_ Kratos’ glare implied, but Matthew was beyond caring, instead, leaning forward to show he had his full attention. Lloyd joined him, and Matthew once again observed the man’s walls crumble to pieces in the face of the other teen’s enthusiasm.

So Kratos sighed and began his story, taking a gold locket out from under his shirt. He didn’t open it, just ran his thumb over the surface like it was the only thing keeping him going. “I used to live in Luin,” he began. “The great city of hope, that rebuilt itself every time the Desians decided to burn it down. It was a frequent target of attacks, being so close to Asgard’s Human Ranch, and in one of the raids my wife was captured.”

Lloyd and Genis both choked on their own spit at the revelation that Kratos was married, but he ignored them. “By the time I got there, they’d already placed an Exsphere on her. We’d managed to escape, and for a few years, we were happy. We had to run, constantly, but we were happy. Then they caught up to us.

“They’d been experimenting with the Exspheres, and my wife was the most successful one they had, and when they finally cornered us…they ripped it out of her chest.”

Genis’ breath hitched. “Like Marble,” he whimpered.

“And Clara,” Colette added.

Kratos nodded. “She…attacked our son,” he continued, and if Genis and Lloyd were shocked by the fact that Kratos had a wife, they nearly had heart attacks when they heard about his son. “And then she regained her consciousness. She asked me to kill her.” He closed his eyes and tipped his head back, and they were all kind enough to not ask what happened next. It was rather obvious.

Raine whapped Matthew on the back of the head. “Ow!” he yelped, scrambling away from the mad-woman. “What was that for?!”

Raine was fuming. “Couldn’t you leave well enough alone?”

“None of you did!” he countered, jumping to his feet. “What happened to that ‘bottling things up is unhealthy’ crap?!”

“Yes—well,” Raine fumbled for an answer.

Genis leapt to her defense. “That’s different!” he insisted.

Matthew turned to him, nearly spitting sparks. “How so?” he challenged. “Because he hid it so well I was the only one who noticed instead of having an extremely noticeable panic attack?”

“You didn’t even like the guy!” Genis blustered, and it was like the boy had dumped a bucket of ice water over his head.

No, Matthew hadn’t been very fond of Volechek. But… “You think that makes a gods-damned difference?!” he screeched. “You think that makes the nightmares softer?! Or the weight of his life _lighter?!_ You think it makes my life easier, knowing that I _murdered her brother_ , but it’s fine because _it’s not like I liked him anyways?!_ ”

Volechek was snarling at him, and Matthew was nearly spitting sparks, like his mom did when she was angry beyond all reason. _“Take the pirate with you and go,”_ the beastman king spat. _“But I do what I must to protect my people.”_

 _“All you do is make more enemies,”_ Matthew hissed back. _“Champa, Sana, and now me. And trust me, I’m a lot more dangerous than I look.”_

 _“You were right,”_ Volechek muttered humorlessly. The light from the lens was blinding; Matthew could barely make out the king’s distorted silhouette. _“You were the worst enemy I made.”_

 _“Volechek!”_ Sveta howled, her raging emotions breaking the strange connection between the two of them and unceremoniously shoving Matthew back into his own body.

When the world came back into focus Matthew realized he was breathing heavily, and Genis had backed away from him, nearly back in his sister’s arms. “It fucking doesn’t,” he snarled at the boy, because anger was easier to face than sorrow.

Then he turned and ran.

* * *

They hadn’t gone after him; why would they? They had all proved how little they knew each other, and despite Colette’s boundless enthusiasm they weren’t friends. Matthew had just been the strange boy they’d happened to rescue while they were looking for their _real_ friend, and they were just a means to an end for him. A way to travel Sylvarant without being completely clueless about the world, and a group of people to stave off the aching loneliness and crippling panic.

Not friends.

 _Not_ friends.

Not _friends_.

Who was he kidding? He was a horrible liar.

He still had the girl’s tent and the cooking pot too.

…And Lloyd still had his swords.

But he didn’t even know where to start looking for them. _Maybe_ they went back to Palmacosta to check on Neil and Chocolat and Cacao, but maybe they went straight to Hakonesia Peak and onwards to their next destination. And even though he _wanted_ to, he _couldn’t_ look for them. He’d _tried_ , but he hadn’t even gotten out of sight of the House of Salvation—where he’d ended up after finally running out all the anger and panic and _fear_ —before his breath had started coming in short gasps and his knees had gone limp and shaky and his vision wavered.

Not even the soothing heat of Efreet’s presence could calm him down, and he’d ended up back in the House of Salvation, waving off the concerned priests when they asked why he was so pale and terrified.

Damn it. _Damn it_. “Damn it, damn it, damn it,” he hissed, dropping his head into his hands as he sat in front of the altar. The statue, with its halo of clear glass, depicted a serene woman with a gentle smile; to Matthew, it looked like she was mocking him.

‘ _Son of Weyard’s two greatest heroes,’_ he thought bitterly, clutching the box in his pocket in a death grip, _‘and I can’t handle being alone for more than five minutes. What the hell was I thinking, getting this?’_

He was pathetic.

He’d had all night and part of the morning to stew over what had happened, and really they all had been at fault; except Colette, who’d done nothing but listen and try to understand. And maybe not Lloyd either; he’d mostly just listened. Or Kratos…okay, so maybe he and Genis were the only ones really at fault. Matthew for pushing and then blowing up, and Genis for saying such a horrible thing. And maybe Raine, a little bit, for pushing at Matthew.

He’d wanted to talk about Volechek, he really had…but to have it dismissed so easily, just because Kratos had lost family and not someone he hadn’t really liked in the first place? Hurt. More than Matthew realized.

He was still not over it, not what happened at the Apollo Lens, not what happened during the Grave Eclipse, and definitely not what happened to Mikasalla. He wasn’t, not by a long shot; he was still broken, still torn up, and still plagued by nightmares. He couldn’t even muster up the courage to find them and apologize for running out on them, because he was a gods-damned coward who couldn’t walk out the door.

Damn it.

 _Damn it_.

Damn it, no! No, no, no! He would not do this; not again. He would not sit by as the good things in his life walked on without him. He couldn’t do that anymore. Not after _losing_ her, maybe for forever. He couldn’t do that; anything in the world—all the worlds—would be better than that.

He could do this.

He _would_. He’d go to Hakonesia and ask if they’d passed through yet, and if they hadn’t, he’d wait for them there. It would be easy enough. He knew the way there—and even if he didn’t, it was pathetically easy, with his connection to the earth, to find the pass through the nearby mountain range—and it wasn’t really _that_ far. If he walked quickly, he could get there in two, three days, maximum. And that was after adding all the anxiety attacks he was certain to get, and the time they would eat up.

It was doable. Whether he would do it or not was the question.

Wow, he couldn’t even lie to _himself_. That was a whole new level of pathetic.

* * *

In the end, it took two weeks for them to show up.

Matthew was leaning against the wall of the inn, wondering if he’d perhaps missed them anyways. His sword had been unbuckled from his back (it was heavy, and since he was only standing around anyways, he didn’t see the point in carrying it), though within easy reach; that pervert of an old man who’d stared at Raine and Colette was casting one too many glances at it.

He wouldn’t even be able to touch it, of course, but it was the principle of the matter. And Matthew didn’t want to have to explain that he hadn’t been the one to throw the man into the wall and broken his arm…again.

He glanced up at the sun overhead and let out a puff of air; it’d be lunchtime soon, and the proprietor of the inn had near-about adopted him with how long he’d been staying, especially since the meager amount of gald he’d managed to accumulate—looted from the idiotic bandits that thought trying to rob _him_ was a good idea—ran out a week ago. He’d been helping her run the inn in return for a place to stay; the place was busy, being located in such a pivotal location. And now that the ridiculous fee was gone, more people were streaming in.

Grenda had been grateful for the assistance, enough that she’d started dropping hints about how sorry she’d be to see him go. Her own children had long since left; one off to Luin to start a family with her husband, and the other down in Palmacosta, pursuing his dream of becoming a scholar. But as fun as he was finding it, being an innkeeper wasn’t what Matthew wanted to do; even if he hadn’t decided to follow through with Colette’s Journey of Regeneration (decided that fourth night he’d been parted from them, when he’d stumbled into Grenda’s inn white as a sheet and shaking like a leaf, but still there, whole and somewhat healthy, and ready to find them even if he had to search the whole of Sylvarant by himself), Matthew did need to find his dad, and a way home.

But, innkeeping. Innkeepering? Whatever. Now he could add that to his list of skills. Rief was going to be so proud of him.

Stifling a yawn, Matthew ran a hand through his hair before collecting his sword and heading inside, drawn there by the delectable scent of the stew Grenda had going. “Afternoon,” he greeted the bustling woman, who looked a bit frayed around the edges.

“Matthew!” she greeted, much more enthusiastically than he did. She even spun around a few times before rushing back to the kitchen. “Were you out skulking by the roadside again?” she called, and Matthew took a second to be amused by the fact that she treated anyone who walked through her door, no matter their age, like a toddler who needed guidance by their mother.

“I’m not skulking,” he defended himself as she came back out, carrying a loaf of bread and a rather large bowl of stew. His stomach rumbled in appreciation and anticipation as he took both things from her, easily holding it above her head where she couldn’t take them back. “I’m waiting. There’s a difference.”

Grenda shook her head at his childishness and swatted his arm. “I’m going over to check on Koton,” she declared, side-eying him.

“Really not my fault,” Matthew argued, setting his lunch down on the front counter, already knowing what she was going to ask him. “I warned him to leave my things alone.”

She sighed, apparently giving up for now. “Just don’t break any of my customers.”

Matthew raised his hands defensively. “I would never,” he gasped, placing one hand over his heart. “Grenda, after all we’ve been through, you don’t trust me?”

“She’s a smart lady, Grenda is!” someone yelled from the street.

Matthew stuck his head out the open window. “Nobody asked your opinion, Brenton!” Brenton just cackled loudly before continuing on his rounds, whistling all the while. “It’ll be fine,” he reassured her, pulling back inside. “You will literally be just across the street, and you won’t even be gone half an hour. C’mon, I’m not that hopeless.”

Grenda sighed. “I suppose not. But,” she threatened, “I’d better come back to my inn, not broken parts of it.”

“What if I’m not the one to break it?” Matthew wondered.

“One piece, Matthew!” she called, halfway out the door.

“I get it, I get it,” Matthew waved. “Shoo, I got this.” With a last mock-distrustful glance, she left. “Geez, you’d think I was five with the way she treats me,” he grumbled to himself.

“You act it!” Brenton commented gleefully, and Matthew near about launched himself out the window at the man as the guard sprinted away, crowing with delight all the while.

“You’re the five year old,” Matthew grumbled even though he was far out of hearing range. Well, Brenton could be five if he wanted too. Matthew, on the other hand, was going to sit and eat the delicious lunch Grenda had made, and maybe do a bit of her paperwork too. Maybe. Matthew hated paperwork.

Fifteen minutes later, the door creaked open. “Mm, just a minute,” Matthew said absentmindedly, glaring at the sheet of paper in front of him. He was horrible at math; why was he doing this, again? He couldn’t even read this thing.

“Matthew!?” came a yelp from the doorway, and Matthew actually looked up this time. Lloyd was standing in the doorway, frozen in shock. Colette was peering over his shoulder and Genis was short enough to duck under his arm and get inside the building.

Matthew assumed Raine and Kratos were stuck outside, blocked by the teenager barricade. “Well don’t just stand there, come in. You’re letting in flies.”

“What are you doing here?!” Lloyd ignored him, still blocking the doorway.

“Well,” Matthew pushed away what he thought was the inn’s finance report. “I _thought_ I’d help Grenda with her budgeting stuff, but I’m horrible at math and I can’t read her handwriting, so…” he frowned. “Are you going to come in or not? Because you’re blocking the door, and Brenton will take any excuse you give him to push you over.”

Lloyd looked like he would stand there forever, but Colette placed her hands against his back and managed to push him out of the way enough for the rest of them to finally enter. “Matthew!” she trilled once she’d done so, rushing over to him and tripping. Luckily, Matthew reacted quickly enough to catch her before she hit the counter, though he overturned his bowl of stew.

Lucky for him, it hit the ground instead of soaking Grenda’s registry book. “Nice to see you again too, Colette,” he greeted the excitable girl. “Did I miss anything interesting?”


	7. I miss the days when my life made sense

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's nice, being back with Lloyd and the others. Matthew'd missed them, he really had. What he hadn't missed, and really, he could do without this, was his tripping over things they considered 'common' and not understanding them. Though, there really was no way to hide the fact that he couldn't understand Sylvarant's writing system. He'd been expecting that to bite him in the ass at some point.
> 
> He just hadn't been expecting the homework.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy First Day of the Year! May it be better and less crazy than the past. Please. If God, any gods at all, are real, please stop the crazy.

Koton kept glancing at him nervously, holding his broken arm close. Matthew ignored this, as he had for the past week and a half, simply standing there with his arms crossed as Colette read from the Book of Regeneration.

“Raging flames in an ancient city, deep within clouds of sand…overlook the city, lighting the darkness…Pure, flowing water floating, overflowing, in an isolated land, becomes a giant pillar and rains down from the sky…Sublime wind, ancient city, the world’s…Enshrined in the center of a giant stone seal lurks evil, impersonating a holy force. Shining…gazing up at the summit of the gods, giving praise to the pillar of the world…from the top of the tower of ancient god…two giant…” Colette squinted at the text, then sighed. “The rest is too damaged, I can’t read it.”

Genis pouted. “Then we don’t even know how many seals are left.”

Matthew closed his eyes, thinking over what Colette had read. “I’d say two, maybe three,” he said, opening his eyes. “’Raging flames within clouds of sand’ was the Seal of Fire, and you said you found the Seal of Water at Thoda Geyser, which rules out the ‘overflowing water that becomes a pillar and rains from the sky’. That ‘giant stone that seals evil’ sounds dangerous but avoidable, and more like a description of something nearby than the seal itself. I wonder what it meant by ‘impersonating a holy force’ though…” he muttered.

He shook his head free of those thoughts and looked over at Kratos and Raine. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it had something to do with wind, or earth, since the other two were fire and water. Does anything come to mind?”

Raine looked surprised. “When put like that, yes, actually. The stone dais in Asgard is famous for being the site of where Cleo the Third offered a sacrifice to the Summon Spirit of Wind to quell a raging storm.”

“Then that’s where we should go next!” Lloyd jumped into the conversation, eager.

“You’ve always wanted to see the City of Ruins, sis,” Genis remarked slyly.

Colette giggled. “It sounds like fun!” Then she turned to Matthew. “But, what do you mean by, ‘since the other two were fire and water, the others should be wind and earth?’”

Matthew held the door open as he struggled to answer that question; he needed to remember that Karis wasn’t around to translate his half-sentences and vague ideas into something others could easily understand. He’d have to do it all on his own. “They’re the primary elements,” he started, and at the blank expressions on Colette, Lloyd, and Genis’ faces Matthew realized he needed to start from a point even earlier than that. He glanced over at Raine and motioned to her students. “Have you taught them nothing?”

Raine huffed. “It wasn’t something that needed to be taught in Iselia, though I am surprised that Colette doesn’t know; I would’ve thought her grandmother or one of the other priests of Martel Temple would’ve taught her something so fundamental.”

“So what are primary elements?” Lloyd asked.

Matthew, in answer, pulled out his journal, figuring drawing a diagram would make explaining easier. He opened to a blank page and drew four circles at the main points of a compass, and four smaller circles at the secondary points. “Water,” he wrote in the top circle. “Fire,” he wrote next at the east point. “Wind,” went in the bottom circle, and, “Earth,” was written in the last. “These are the four primary elements, said to be the building blocks of all life. Light, Dark, Ice, and Lightning,” he wrote in the smaller circles, “are secondary elements, although some argue that they should be called subsidiary elements, since water and ice are nearly the same thing, and fire and lightning share a common brother, but that isn’t really important right now.

“We broke the Seal of Fire, you broke the Seal of Water; it makes sense that there are at least two more seals.” He tapped the rough diagram with his pen. “And it makes the most sense for those seals to be of Wind and Earth. I could be wrong; I could be jumping to conclusions and going in the wrong direction entirely but,” he shrugged. “I don’t think that’s likely.”

“Why did you draw them in a circle?” Colette wondered.

“Elemental affinities,” he answered absently, then nearly wailed in despair when she only blinked up at him curiously. “Seriously? You don’t even know that much? Kratos!”

“Why am I the one at fault this time?” the mercenary said.

Matthew sighed. “Because elemental affinities are a key part of fighting, but not much else.” He turned to the other three—four, it looked like even Raine didn’t know about affinities. “Everything on this planet has an elemental affinity; like that Ktugach. It had a fire affinity.” He once again tapped the diagram, this time drawing a line from the water and ice circles to the fire one. “Water and ice spells are both stronger when used against those with fire affinities; they’ll cause more damage than say, an earth spell would. Fire spells will affect wind affinities the most, though they will also cause significant damage to ice affinities as well. Wind will triumph over earth, and earth is stronger than water.

“The secondary elements are harder to classify, so it’s mostly just a pick and shoot thing with them, although light and dark will always fight for dominance between them. And then there are the sibling elements, although that’s really just a fancy way of classifying the primary elements. Fire and Earth are considered brother elements; pairing the two of them together will double the strength of your cast. Wind and Water are sisters, although their strength in joining together lies more in the healing arts than the offensive ones.

“It’s a lot more intricate and complicated the deeper you go, but this is all the need-to-know stuff.”

“You know a lot,” Genis observed.

Matthew nodded, putting away his journal. “Well, yeah. It’s a cliché saying, but knowledge is power; more than that, knowledge means _choices_. The more things you know about the path forward, the more options you have to choose from.”

“Oh.”

And that, thankfully, was the end of the impromptu lesson; a good thing, really, because Raine had that gleam in her eye again, the one that promised maniacal laughter and rapid-fire questions. Matthew was too tired to deal with that at the moment.

* * *

Grenda, as was her nature, fussed over him the next morning. To be fair, she fussed over the rest of them too—including Kratos, and the bewildered look in the stoic man’s eyes when she did so was a memory Matthew would always treasure—but she focused on Matthew. Probably because she knew him the best.

Leaving a town hadn’t felt so freeing in two years.

Matthew stretched, reveling in the feeling of finally doing something again. Beside him, Raine did the same, possibly just because she could now, with most of the items she’d been carrying before tucked away in Matthew’s limitless pack. “So, which way to Asgard?”

“North-west,” Kratos replied. “Asgard is a city built into the cliffs of the Hima mountain range.”

“Neat,” Matthew grinned. Because, mountains. And cliffs. It almost sounded like home.

A few hours later, as Colette chased after a laughing Lloyd for some silly reason and Raine managed to pull Kratos into a quiet conversation, Genis tugged on Matthew’s sleeve. “Yeah midget?” Matthew asked, glancing down at the younger boy.

Genis did his best to look like he wasn’t pouting. “Stop saying I’m short.”

“When you grow another foot,” Matthew compromised, ruffling his hair. Genis gave up on not-pouting, settling on giving him a glare instead. “Were you wanting something?”

At that, the elf hesitated. Matthew waited, knowing from experience that it was easier to start talking when people gave you time to form the right words. “You…can read the angelic language, right?”

Angelic? What the hell was—wait. That was what Raine had called the ancient Jenei symbols, back at Triet Ruins. And, well, “Yeah, I can read it. Why?”

“I was wondering if you would teach me,” Genis blurted out. When Matthew just stared at him in disbelief, he wilted a little. “And Raine too. I know she’d like to learn. It would help with her research.”

“You want to learn how to read it?” That was the part Matthew was stuck on. Back home, Tyrell hadn’t even bothered trying, and Karis had given the book a cursory glance before admitting it was way over her head. Even Rief, with his insatiable thirst for knowledge, had only learned a few words before calling it quits, only asking to learn when the darkness of the eclipse was close to overpowering him and he’d needed a distraction.

Genis pulled into himself, getting defensive as he misunderstood Matthew’s shock. “If you don’t want to teach me,” he scowled, and Matthew interrupted him.

“No!” he blurted out. “That’s not—that isn’t what I meant. I’m just surprised, is all.” He rubbed at the back of his neck, nervous for some reason he couldn’t even fathom. “It’s just, none of my other friends wanted to touch it with a ten foot pole.”

Now it was Genis’ turn to look surprised. “Why not?”

This was a question Matthew actually knew the answer to. “The weight of learning was too much for them to bear.”

“What?”

“They found it too hard.” Matthew grinned as he remembered that first and nearly last disastrous study session. Tyrell fell asleep three minutes in, head lying on Karis’ lap. Sveta and Himi had giggled about it in the corner, while a furiously blushing Karis looked anywhere but Tyrell even as she ran her fingers through his hair. Eoleo had threatened to throw the Glyph Book into the ocean, which had started a fight with Amiti about how that was littering, and bad for the life in the ocean, and did the brainless pirate really want to kill all the fish and make it so his people starved? And on and on and on. Rief had, as expected, lasted the longest; even longer than Matthew, because _he_ was ready to call it quits after half an hour, if only to get away from the two bickering adults who were _supposed_ to be the mature ones.

That had been a good day. Even if Eoleo had gotten tossed into the ocean and they’d had to fish him out…and then had to fish out Amiti once the pirate took his revenge.

“So?” Genis sounded nervous, and Matthew abruptly realized he was still waiting for an answer. “Will you teach me? Me and Raine?” he amended.

“Well, I’m not much of a teacher,” Matthew admitted. “But if you’re willing to learn, I’m willing to try.”

True to his word, after dinner that night, Matthew pulled out the Glyph Book when Genis came over, dragging his sister behind him. “Okay,” he began, opening to the pages of basic words. “So the thing you need to know first about this jerk language is that it’s much easier to speak than it is to write, and here’s why,” he said, placing the book down where both his impromptu students could see it. “Instead of a group of characters being written together to form one word, each character is, itself, one word, meaning there are close to thousands of characters.” _Like Nihanese kanji,_ he almost said but didn’t. Better to not open that bag of cats.

“Fascinating,” Raine breathed, one finger tracing over the symbols. She tapped the symbol for water, frowning as she compared it to the symbol for rain. “Why are these two so similar?”

“Second thing you need to know,” Matthew said dryly, “is that when we say ‘rain’, it will say ‘sky water’.” He moved Raine’s hand to point at the characters. “This is water,” he said, then flipped the page to locate sky. “Here’s sky. Put them together and you end up with ‘water from the sky’.” He moved back to rain, then tapped water again. “Third thing, and perhaps the only reason I haven’t burned this thing in a fit of frustration, is that every word will fall under one of six categories.”

“Fire, water, wind, earth, light, and dark,” Raine guessed, and Matthew nodded at her.

Genis frowned. “What about the other two? Lightning and ice?”

“Lightning falls under fire, and ice falls under water,” Matthew explained, scanning the water section until he found the symbol. “Here, it’s ‘still water’, and not,” he moved to the character for lake. “’Calm water’,” he said. “They look similar, but one is ice and the other is lake.”

“What category does ‘calm’ fall under?” Genis asked.

In answer, Matthew flipped the page a couple of times. “Wind,” he explained. “Because calm comes before the storms. Of course, if you want to _write_ that sentence, then technically ‘storm’ comes _before_ ‘calm’. It’d be,” he pulled out his pen, mulling it over for a minute, and then wrote both the symbols and the literal translation beneath it.

Of course, Matthew had forgotten one key detail.

“Is…that your handwriting?” Raine asked, flabbergasted. Too late, Matthew remembered that Sylvarant had a different alphabet than Weyard. “It’s absolutely atrocious. It’s unrecognizable, and I don’t think half of these letters are even real. Matthew, who on Sylvarant taught you to write?”

Nobody, Matthew nearly snapped at her. Which was technically true, nobody on _Sylvarant_ had taught him to write. Ivan had been the one to teach him, and Ivan was still on Weyard, whipping Kalay back into shape after the Eclipse nearly decimated it. He said none of this, averting his eyes from Raine in an attempt to keep him from blurting out everything like he had when she’d questioned him about Efreet.

“Matthew,” the professor began slowly. “ _Do_ you know how to write?”

As well-meaning as the question was, Matthew still felt his cheeks flush with anger at the implication. He wasn’t stupid, he could write perfectly well! Just not Sylvarant’s language…which was basically the same as not being able to write, he supposed. The anger left just as soon as it had come, and his shoulders slumped from the defensive position he’d subconsciously assumed. Face red for an entirely different reason now, he slowly shook his head, eyes glued to the ground.

He’d tried to figure out the characters, that day in the library, but he’d had nothing to compare them to and no way to know if he’d gotten them right. “But,” Genis said slowly, “you went to the library. In Palmacosta.”

Matthew let out a puff of air, tracing aimless patterns in the dirt. “Been trying to teach myself,” he muttered lowly, ignoring the fact that all five of his companions were staring at him now.

“Didn’t you ever go to school?” Raine was completely flabbergasted.

This, at least, was something Matthew could answer completely truthfully. “No. My parents taught me what they knew, but that wasn’t much. Mostly just a bit of history and some basic math. There were more important things to learn.”

“Like what?”

He shrugged. “How to fight off the monsters around our house. How to hunt down food and identify edible plants, and cook them in ways that wouldn’t result in food poisoning.” If Ivan hadn’t taught him, whenever he was visiting with Karis, Matthew doubted he would have ever learned to write. It just hadn’t been that important, especially since the only time his father wrote anything had been his monthly correspondences to Kraden, and Matthew hadn’t been all that interested in those. “Look, can we just drop it?”

“Absolutely not!” Raine sounded scandalized, and Matthew winced. “I will just have to teach you.”

Raine was standing over him when he looked up from the ground. “You…don’t have to do that,” Matthew said awkwardly as she turned around to dig through the supplies she still carried.

“Nonsense,” she declared. “I am a teacher; teaching those who wish to learn is not only my job, but my privilege. Besides, you didn’t have to agree to try to teach us the angelic language, and yet you still did. Think of this as repaying the favor.” She paused as something occurred to her. “How _did_ you learn the angelic language?”

Matthew held up the Glyph Book, thinking fast. Because saying _‘A forgotten goddess shoved the language into my head’_ was not an option. “I came across this in some old ruins and got curious. Taught myself most of it, and ran into a few people over the course of my travels who taught a bit more. Mostly just figured it out through trial and error, and a lot of bad translations.”

He still remembered misreading that tablet in the Ouroboros, about the snakes. He was _trying_ to forget it. He’d never been so embarrassed in his life.

Raine stared at him curiously for a couple of seconds before very visibly shoving her questions to the back of her mind, dropping down to sit beside him again, holding a multitude of books and a few pens. “Alright,” she began, opening one of the books she was holding. “This is a book on the history of the Triet Desert.” She handed him a loose piece of paper and began to point out the individual letters. “We might as well combine writing lessons with a history one.”

* * *

Lloyd was still glaring at him. He’d been glaring at him ever since last night, when Raine had ended Matthew’s writing lesson by telling him to write a short essay on the history she’d taught at the same time. Lloyd had snickered at Matthew getting homework, right up until Raine had given him, Colette, and Genis some as well.

Matthew sighed. “If you didn’t want homework,” he chided, “then you shouldn’t have brought attention to yourself.”

Lloyd’s answer was an unintelligible grumble.

Genis rolled his eyes and swallowed his mouthful of sandwich. “He’s just mad because I won’t let him copy,” the elf said. “It’s what he normally does.”

“Isn’t he three years older than you?” Matthew asked, because he was reasonably certain that Genis was fourteen. “You guys don’t get separated by year or anything?” Rief’s school had done that, before he’d started traveling around with Kraden. At least, that was what the Mercury Adept had told him.

Genis shook his head. “Iselia doesn’t have a large enough schoolhouse to do that, and Raine’s the only teacher anyways. We all got the same homework, but the quality she expected differed depending on where you were academically.”

Matthew glanced over at Lloyd, who was still grumbling and glaring down at his paper, as if it would catch fire if he stared at it hard enough. “I’m guessing Lloyd wasn’t ranked very high on that list.”

Lloyd looked up at his name and scowled when he realized what they were talking about. “At least I can write,” he ground out, and didn’t protest when Matthew pulled his essay out of his hands.

Matthew raised an eyebrow at the paper and failed to contain an amused chuckle. “At least I can _spell_ ,” he pointed out, and Genis looked over his shoulder at his best friend’s homework.

“Lloyd, ‘desert’ only has one ‘s’. You’ve got ‘Triet Dessert’ written here about three times.”

“’Climate’ is spelled with a ‘c’, not a ‘k’,” was Matthew’s contribution. “And I don’t know if this is a spelling error or just not even a real word.”

Genis frowned at the word (?) Matthew was pointing at. “What’s ‘d-e-c-h-t-r-u-k-s-h-i-n’ supposed to be?”

“Is that supposed to be ‘destruction’?” Matthew asked.

Lloyd was scowling at both of them now. “Shut up,” he snapped, snatching the paper out of Matthew’s unresisting hands. To his credit, the younger swordsman went over his paper, locating each one of the mistakes they’d pointed out and changing them, until he reached the mangled destruction. “How are you supposed to spell this one?”

As Genis moved to help Lloyd with his paper, Matthew polished off his lunch before pulling out his own essay. Luckily, though the alphabets themselves were different, the systems were not. Sylvarant had twenty-six letters, and rearranging those letters in different ways made words, just like in Weyard. It was just that the letters themselves were vastly different than what he was used to, curved and flowy, unlike the harsh blocks of his native tongue.

It had made learning it simpler, if only because he hadn’t had to remember an entirely new system, like when he’d asked Himi to teach him Nihanese, or when he and Rief had struggled to figure out the rules to the language of the ancient Jenei.

He was still having trouble writing it, though reading it was now doable.

Colette plopped down next to him, startling him when she leaned against his shoulder to keep herself upright. “What are you doing?” she asked, curious. She and Raine had been away from their little lunch camp for the past half-hour or so doing mystical woman things that Matthew was _never_ going to ask about.

“Trying to remember the character for ‘m’,” Matthew admitted, scowling down at his paper much like Lloyd had done. “It doesn’t want to stick.”

“Didn’t Raine give you a chart?” Colette wondered.

Matthew scribbled a few shapes on a spare piece of parchment before violently crossing them out, muttering curse words under his breath. “If I keep using it, I’ll never get any of the letters to stick,” he growled, hissing at a few more failed attempts.

“I take it it’s not going well?” Raine’s voice came from his left.

Matthew hissed again. It was a surprisingly handy sound for getting frustration out. “I can’t write, and Lloyd can’t spell,” he told her. “All we need is someone who can’t read and we can be your worst nightmare.”

“My worst nightmare is someone who refuses to learn at all,” Raine pointed out. “You and Lloyd are nothing compared to that horror.”

Colette giggled, settling herself more firmly against his shoulder and jostling his pen out of his hand. Giving up on his essay, he stuck it back in his bag before pulling out his journal. Colette looked over it curiously as he opened it to a blank page and picked his pen up. “What are you doing now?”

“Drawing,” was his curt answer as he looked over at Genis and Lloyd, who had glanced up at Colette’s question but were now back to arguing about whether or not Lloyd had spelled ‘sorcerer’ wrong. Colette fell silent as she watched his pen sweep across the page, her grip tightening a bit when the shapes turned into recognizable figures. He looked from the two across the clearing to the pages only a few times, but when Lloyd and Genis finally fell silent, curious about what he was up to, he’d already finished.

“Wow,” Colette breathed, bringing the two boys over. “It looks just like them!”

Lloyd and Genis leaned over his shoulder, taking in the sketch he’d done of the two of them with their heads together, sketch-Genis pointing at something on the paper in front of him with one hand while the other reached for the pen sketch-Lloyd still held. He was doing his best to keep it out of his reach; not hard with how much smaller Genis was. Lloyd was trying to shove Genis away from his paper, and Genis was glaring at Lloyd, his bangs shadowing half his face and making him look more menacing than he actually was.

“You did that just now?” Lloyd sounded surprised. “It’s only been a few minutes.”

Matthew shrugged, putting some finishing touches on Lloyd’s ridiculous, gravity-defying hair. “I like drawing; a picture’s worth a thousand words, you know.”

Colette tugged on his arm. “Will you draw me next?” she pleaded.

“Maybe later,” Matthew told her, catching a glimpse of Kratos reappearing from who-knows-where. “We should probably get going soon.”

* * *

Asgard was beautiful. Not in the buildings or anything, because they were short and squat and not very pleasing, but the location was gorgeous. Clinging to the edge of a cliff, leaning out over the edge of the abyss; Matthew approved. “I like it here,” was the first thing out of his mouth.

Raine enthusiastically agreed with him, sparkles in her eyes. “There are so many ruins!” she cheered, head whipping from side to side. “There are said to be multiple caves with drawings from ancient times on their walls; we simply must stop by before we leave!”

Matthew perked up at that. “Really? Where? Can we go now?”

Behind them, Genis sighed. “Martel save us, there’s two of them.”

“Professor, Matthew, focus,” Lloyd said, grabbing both of their arms before they could run off. “I thought we came here to look at that fancy rock.”

“Stone dais!” both of them corrected him.

“Whatever.” Lloyd shook his head. “We didn’t come here on a field trip.”

Genis snorted and muttered something Matthew couldn’t hear. Lloyd, it seemed, did not have that problem. “What was that?!”

“Focus, Lloyd,” Colette parroted with a grin. Lloyd stuck his tongue out at her.

“Enough,” Kratos finally cut in, exasperated with the lot of them. “I believe the dais is up above the rest of the town.”

Matthew looked up, eyeing the path to the cliff-top. It looked well used, but steep. “Where the wind can reach it, yeah? Makes sense, I guess.” He tugged on Raine’s sleeve. “So, you mentioned a sacrifice? What’s the story behind that?”

With a happy hum, Raine launched into the history of Asgard’s stone dais with a relish that only grew as it came into sight. She instantly stopped talking about Cleo the III and raced to put her hands on the rectangular slab of stone. “See here,” she said, tracing a curve Matthew could barely see. “This delicate curve is said to express the way the Summon Spirit of wind flew through the sky. In addition, it is said that this stone is infused with a large volume of mana,” and that was something Matthew could confirm. This thing was glowing like a beacon and he couldn’t help but want to touch it.

So he did.

Hindsight really was twenty-twenty.

He stumbled back away from the stone, the overwhelming presence of _dark_ fading as abruptly as it had come. Raine stopped her spiel about the Filament effect to look at him curiously. “Are you all right?” she asked, her hands still on the stone.

He looked from her hands to her face in confusion as Colette walked over to him, concern etched all over her face. “You…can’t feel it?” he asked redundantly. There was no way she felt it, otherwise she wouldn’t be touching it. “It’s,” he shivered, remembering the slimy, rotten feeling that had shot up his spine the second he’d touched the dais. “ _Evil_ ,” he insisted. Malicious.

He opened his mouth to say more – mostly just, ‘let’s get the hell away from this thing’ –but Raine suddenly jumped up onto the dais and sprinted towards the back, where Lloyd was. What was Lloyd doing over there? And who were those two with him? “What did you just say?!” Raine screeched, and Matthew decided he’d better get over there before something exploded.

He wasn’t in time to stop her from kicking over the two Lloyd had been talking to, and he arrived halfway through the middle of her lecture. But that was because he’d had to go around the ruin, still flatly refusing to touch it. “During the Balacruf Dynasty, this ruin was,” Raine was interrupted by Lloyd.

“Professor!” He looked more panicked than a simple lecture warranted.

Raine frowned at him. “If you have any questions, I’ll take them after the lecture.”

Lloyd pointed at the odd little box Raine was standing next to. “The bomb turned on.”

“Venus, Mars and Mercury, I was kidding about explosions!” Matthew hissed, running over to them.

“You flipped the switch, woman!” the red-haired man yelped, pointing accusingly at Raine. The one with glasses started to panic, hands flailing around.

“Harley,” he began.

Raine kicked both of them again. “Don’t blame me! You built this thing!”

“That’s not important right now,” Lloyd snapped. “How do we turn it off?”

Harley glanced to the side. “You don’t. I didn’t build it with an off switch.” Raine decided that necessitated another kick.

“What do we do?” Raine panicked. “If we don’t stop it the ruin will be destroyed!”

“I don’t think I’d miss it,” Matthew muttered low enough so she couldn’t hear. He glowered at the stone.

“Maybe if we break it?” Lloyd suggested, drawing the Masamune.

Matthew stopped him. “Don’t be stupid Lloyd, all that would do is make it blow up in your face.” Hey, that gave him an idea. He picked up the bomb.

“Matthew, I thought we weren’t being stupid!” Lloyd yelped, reaching for him.

Matthew danced out of his reach, looking down at the bomb. Numbers were so much easier to read than letters. “I am being reasonably smart about this,” he refuted.

“You’re holding a bomb!”

Matthew shrugged. “I never said it wasn’t crazy; just not stupid. There’s a difference, and a good thing too. Stupid plans get you killed, but the crazy ones are so nonsensical that they usually work.”

“Matthew!”

“Just a sec Lloyd, it’s about to explode and I need to concentrate.” The surrounding air was chock full of wind mana; not very ideal, considering wind was Matthew’s worst element, but needs must. And, well, if it didn’t work, it wasn’t like he’d be completely helpless. He could always call on Efreet, and this wouldn’t be the first thing to blow up in his face. He’d be fine.

Probably.

The wind whipped around him as he gathered up the mana, wincing as it’s uncontrollable, unstable nature gave him a few cuts. Damn, this was his only spare shirt, and now it was as ruined as his other one. He was going to have to go _shopping_. “I hate shopping,” he sighed as the mana condensed around the bomb, lifting it a few inches out of his hands. Just in time too, as the bomb detonated. Matthew flinched back, away from the intense heat that the mana hadn’t been able to contain; the explosion itself, however, faded out without harming anyone.

Matthew let the mana dissipate back into the wind, brushed the lingering ashes off his hands, and turned back to Raine and Lloyd. “See? I knew what I was doing.”

Lloyd, who’d been gaping, snapped his mouth shut before shooting back a retort. “You were totally winging it.”

“I was not,” Matthew bluffed. “That was a real, viable plan that I’ve totally done before.”

“Now I know you’re lying,” Lloyd scoffed. “Who does something like that regularly?”

Matthew had no answer for that; at least, not one that wouldn’t make him sound crazy. Because _‘I developed this tactic in response to the creepy ninja soldiers who like to jump out of the shadows and throw grenades at me and my friends,’_ definitely sounded crazy. “Shut up,” he went with.

And then the mayor showed up.

* * *

“I take it back,” Matthew snapped as he stalked out of the item store, leaving behind a shell-shocked owner. Genis trailed behind him, trying to calm him down. “I hate this town and everyone in it.”

Genis sighed. “Most of Sylvarant is like this,” the elf began.

“Then most of Sylvarant is stupid,” Matthew hissed. “And it’s no wonder the Desians are so powerful, if this is the way normal half-elves are treated! Don’t these people understand that all they’re doing is driving people to join up with their enemies?!” He violently kicked at a rock, watching with a sort of vicious satisfaction as it embedded itself into the wall of the inn, where the innkeeper had had the same reaction to their inquiry as the item shop owner.

Their search for Harley and his friend hadn’t gone smoothly, mostly because everyone they’d asked had side-eyed them before saying, “What do you want with that filthy half-elf?”

Which had led to Matthew blowing up at them.

He’d learned in Palmacosta, and through some of Raine’s history lessons, that half-elves were discriminated against. That many of them joined the Desians because of this. That Desians were half-elves who believed themselves superior to humans and brought terror to the whole world. But this was his first time really seeing it, and, well… “These people are all biased! Stupid! Morons!” he spat, storming back to where they’d all decided to meet after splitting into groups. “Assholes! Thinking themselves blameless, believing that the Desians are something they can’t stop, can’t fight against. All they have to do is not treat others like scum, and they’d probably stop half the population from joining!”

“Matthew, calm down,” Genis begged, trembling. Matthew paused; he wasn’t that terrifying, was he? “You’re making the ground shake.”

…Oh. Face flushing over his lack of control, Matthew stopped, placing his forehead against a nearby wall and taking deep breaths. “Sorry,” he apologized once his blood wasn’t boiling. “I…wasn’t thinking.”

“It’s okay,” Genis said, looking around. “I don’t think anyone else noticed it was you, and no one got hurt. You just knocked a few things over.”

“Still,” he whispered, throat clogging as his mind immediately jumped to worst-case scenarios. “That could have been bad. Thank you for stopping me.”

Genis nodded slowly, gears turning in the back of his mind. Matthew grinned ruefully to himself; Genis reminded him more and more of Rief every day. Give either of them a problem or a strange behavior, and they’d dissect it in seconds. At least Genis didn’t know him as well as Rief did. The elf could see _something_ was bothering him, but wouldn’t know what. For now, that was enough.

“We should go meet up with everyone else,” Genis said after another minute of letting Matthew cool down. “Someone must’ve found something.”

Matthew sighed, pushing himself off the wall. “I hope so. I don’t think I’d be much use talking to any more people,” he admitted. “My temper’s still too high.” Once more, he mourned the loss of his patience. It had been nearly infinite once, but Amiti and Eoleo had worn most of it down and Tyrell had made off with the rest of it. “Sorry I wasn’t much help.”

Genis shrugged, beginning to walk again. “You didn’t do anything I wouldn’t’ve done. You just did it sooner.” Colette came into sight, and as soon as she caught sight of the two of them she started waving.

She and Lloyd ran over to them. “Did you feel the earthquake just now?” she asked innocently, and Matthew tensed.

“I thought the whole cliff was gonna collapse!” Lloyd added, and Matthew couldn’t look at either of them. He’d thought the same.

“It wasn’t that bad,” Genis argued, glancing from Lloyd to Matthew. “And it barely lasted a minute.”

Kratos and Raine walked up at that moment. Raine was fuming, and Kratos looked displeased. Matthew would almost find their expressions funny, if it didn’t bode ill for them.

It did.

“I told you that thing was evil,” he muttered after they’d finished explaining. Awakened spirits and sacrifices aside, Kratos had come up with a good plan. He just didn’t like it.

“Raine, this is a bad idea.” At least he wasn’t alone in that. Genis was staring up at his sister with wide eyes.

Raine shook her head, reaching up to straighten the ceremonial hat she was now wearing. “It’s the best one we have,” she refuted, which was why Matthew wasn’t arguing more. Because it really was. “We can’t let Aisha go out as bait, and I do have Barrier in case we aren’t fast enough.”

Genis made a noise of frustration. “But if it really is Sylph, will Barrier be enough to stop an attack?”

“It’s not Sylph,” Matthew instantly denied, catching everyone’s attention. “Summon Spirits feel…different, than whatever that thing that’s hiding in the dais is. Cleaner. Purer. Less…slimy.”

“Slimy?” Colette asked, curious.

He nodded sharply. “Slimy and gross and _wrong_ ,” he confirmed. “I still don’t understand why none of you can feel it.”

“You’re sensitive to the flow of mana,” Kratos joined in. Matthew looked at him, suddenly realizing he no longer had to look up to stare him in the eyes. Was he still growing? “You pick up on the movements around you and read them, perhaps subconsciously; intentions move mana as easily as spells do. So you can feel whether something is liable to attack you or help you, based on what it is feeling.”

Matthew just blinked at him. “Could you repeat that. With, smaller words. That I could understand?”

Raine had that gleam again. “It would explain why you were so out of it at the ranch. The intentions of the Desians were far from pure, and so many.”

“So, Matthew can feel what we’re feeling?” Lloyd asked.

He mutely shook his head. He’d never felt anything of the sort! Except, there was that time with Remiel. He hadn’t liked the angel, had felt crushed by his presence. And he _had_ felt off at the ranch. And…he _really_ didn’t like that rock.

Kratos crossed his arms. “Doubtful. His secondary sense only seems to kick in when the target in question has a high concentration of mana contained within them.” He hesitated, then continued. “Martel – an old friend of mine – she was like that too.”

Matthew’s head was swimming at the implication that he had some sort of bastardized version of Sveta’s Spirit Sense that he missed the next five minutes of conversation. When he managed to shove any and all related thoughts into the ‘deal with it later’ box in the back of his mind, Colette was staring at Kratos with wide, curious eyes. Matthew instantly decided his brain was too overworked and he didn’t want to know what he’d missed.

Instead, he clapped his hands together. “Are we doing this or not?”

Sundown found them once again standing in front of the dais, the dying rays of the sun casting everything in a deep orange that made Lloyd’s jacket look like it was dripping blood. Matthew shivered at the image as Raine kneeled in the center of the dais, inside the inscribed runic circle, gripping the ceremonial staff so tightly that Matthew could see her knuckles going white even from where he was standing.

Then, Raine stood and began to dance. It was a dizzying pattern that Aisha had spent all afternoon teaching her, and when the staff lightly touched the north rune mana welled up from the contact point. Matthew, not even touching the dais, winced as he felt the…thing inside wake up and start paying attention. Raine spun around, her movements leading her west, and when the staff touched the rune there more mana sprung to the surface. Matthew wobbled as the mana started saturating the air, tinting the red rays of the sun green.

Kratos steadied him with a hand on his shoulder as Colette grabbed his arm. “Matthew?”

Matthew gritted his teeth. “It’s heavy,” he grunted, feeling more mana slam into his shoulders as Raine touched the eastern point. He was reasonably certain that the only things keeping him upright were Kratos and Colette. But then Raine’s staff touched the final point and he couldn’t even claim that, hitting his knees hard as he struggled not to hurl under the rage he could feel emitting from the dais as Raine kneeled in the center again, her dance done.

Lloyd spared him a worried glance from where he was standing next to Genis but didn’t move, his hands gripping his swords and ready to leap in to help his teacher. Genis hadn’t even done that, too focused on his sister, not that Matthew expected any different. He looked up as the dais started to shine, and the townspeople of Asgard began to whisper to one another, awed by the sight and unable to feel the slimy taint that was weaving through them on the conjured wind.

When the creature appeared, Matthew wondered how any of them could have mistaken this thing for Sylph. It was smaller than Matthew had expected, its massive mana pool shoved into a creature about the size Volechek’s twisted form had been, and its skin was a pale lavender. It had tusks on each side of its mouth and three glowing eyes, and instead of legs it had a giant blade for a tail that made it look like a reject anchor. He struggled to his feet as it said, “I have come for the girl.”

Beside him, Colette gasped, her grip on his arm turning painful. “I…can feel it,” she whispered, shuddering. “It’s so evil, Matthew. Professor!” she called out, but Lloyd and Genis were already there, Genis throwing a large fireball into its face and Lloyd slashing at its stomach, getting a good hit with a large beast made purely of mana.

“Go,” he motioned her forwards, Kratos having already leaped ahead as Raine’s glowing barrier circled the dais, protecting the scattering citizens. “I’m going to try something.” She gave him a nod before pulling out her chakrams and climbing onto the dais, joining up with Genis to slam spells into the Windmaster’s side.

Matthew took a fortifying breath before following, letting it out when he realized that with the creature out of the dais, the stone itself no longer felt like a grave. He stayed in the back, knowing that the pounding headache that had yet to disappear would mean fighting with his sword would be almost suicide, and focused his psynergy, reaching deep for the thread that connected to another plane of existence.

“Burn, O Lord of Hellfire. Efreet!” Matthew was expecting something along the lines of what happened in Weyard; he summoned something very big to cause lots of damage. Then it went on its merry way after it had done so, taking psynergy from him and his Djinns as payment. That…was not what happened.

Instead of fire raining down from the sky (like Matthew had half expected, what with Efreet’s base element and his own battle with the Spirit), flames erupted around Matthew’s fists, burning brightly and vaguely shaped like Efreet’s gauntlets. They spread up his arms and washed over him in a wave of warmth that almost caught him off guard.

A curious lightness to his back informed him that his sword had somehow vanished from existence, and he took a moment to remind himself to beat Efreet bloody if the damned Spirit had lost his sword. A curious heaviness at the base of his spine informed him he’d been granted…something else.

With a single, curious thought, that _something else_ twitched into his line of sight. Matthew felt like gaping; or swearing, he wasn’t sure.

Lloyd beat him to it. “What the hell?!” the teen yelped. “Matthew what did you do?!”

Matthew would very much like to know the answer to that question as well. It had been an instinct born from countless battles, to call upon his Summons. He really hadn’t been expecting this.

Also, his sword was gone, which was just, unfair. On the plus side, Efreet’s flames had burned away his headache. “ **Hand-to-hand it is then** ,” he muttered to himself, deciding to ignore the fire and the extra appendage and the strange double-layer to his voice. It wasn’t like it was permanent; he could already feel the psynergy drain Efreet was causing him, and he knew that when his levels became too low the Spirit would go back to wherever he was when he wasn’t being called upon.

It was still weird though.

The Windmaster, though taken aback at the oddity, recovered before the rest of them, and spun towards him, the blade of its tail giving its summersault a deadly edge.

Matthew dove to the side, a hand shooting out to claw at the ground so he didn’t fly clear off the dais when he underestimated the force he needed to use with the fire boosting his every movement. He was only mildly alarmed when his fingers sank through the stone like it was soft butter. His tail lashed out, helping him keep his balance, and he sank into the low, wide stance he’d seen Sveta adopt whenever she unleashed her inner beast.

This strange fusion with Efreet felt a bit like the way she’d described it. Powerful, freeing, and _right_. Dangerous, but right.

He let out a laugh that transformed into a howl once it left his throat, and he shot forward, weaving around the deadweights ( _friends_ , his mind insisted, but that was a distant part he was having trouble listening to right now) with ease. They were so slow, getting in his way, he could easily make it so they _weren’t_ —

He jumped over Colette, suddenly terrified he would go through her without caring about the damage he would cause. The Windmaster raised an arm to block his kick from connecting, but that was fine. Matthew simply landed on the perch it so thoughtfully provided, and let his tail curve around it and whack it in the face. It let out a roar and flailed, but Matthew had already leapt out of range.

In pure defense, the Windmaster spun, becoming a deadly wheel once more. It slammed into Matthew in a move that should have cut off his arm, or at the very least have dislocated his shoulder. Instead, there was just a slight twinge of pain that made the flames dancing around him roar with a rage that was not entirely foreign. His fist jabbed the Windmaster in its ribs in retaliation, the gauntlets there licking greedily at the things skin. It shrieked and retreated, straight into the Fierce Demon Fang Kratos had been trying to teach Lloyd for the past week.

The Windmaster shrieked again, high-pitched enough that everyone winced, and began trying to drag itself back into the dais. There was no way Matthew was going to let it; shoving things in a corner and trying to forget about them might be what Sylvarant normally did with their problems, but that wasn’t how he worked. And he was _not_ going to let this thing get away so it could terrorize more people in the future.

It took less than a thought, to gather the mana he needed in the palm of his hand. The fireball he generated was nowhere near the size Efreet could get it, but he didn’t need size. He needed intensity, and heat. And he had a lot of it. “ **Burn!** ” he snarled, releasing the energy and watching as it slammed into the creature. Its scream went so high it went out of human hearing range as the flames consumed it, fed even higher by the wind it was generating in an attempt to save itself.

Soon, it was nothing but ashes, and that was good, because when Matthew passed out, the strain of Efreet’s power too much for him, the flames snuffed out of existence as well.


End file.
